Jennifer Leland

"Stepping off the plane in Cape Town was like turning the cover of a great novel; during the three months I interned and traveled in South Africa I encountered experiences ranging from the joyous, comedic and adventurous to the distressing and tragic. I quickly realized –especially after joining the staff of the Cape Town Refugee Centre immediately after the xenophobic attacks of May 2008 – that there''d be a density of experience that would be more than enough to fill frequent updates to friends and family.  For those who may be considering a similar stay in South Africa through VAC, perhaps a few passages from my messages home will prove interesting and at best, convince you to visit the place one American journalist called "the city at the end of the world (read Jenny's messages after the photo below)."

FIRST OF THE CAPE TOWN DIARIES

I think I''ll start by saying one of my first impressions has been that Cape Town doesn''t always make life easy, but it makes life interesting. Well, on second thought, I suppose in some senses life is easy: I''ve happily traded the high cost of living in Geneva for prices that favor the American dollar, am enjoying the ease with which one can find superb opportunities for hiking, sailing, scuba diving and camping, am enthralled with the city''s photogenic topography and have been to a shopping mall and a few restaurants that look identical to those I''ve frequented in the US.  I live in a big house with 11 housemates from South Africa, Namibia, Mozambique and the US, and it''s easy to invite in the sounds of multilingual conversations simply by opening the door to my second story room.  In the mornings I have been met by the easy smile and conversation of Lindiwe, a lovely young South African woman who takes care of the house where I live and was quick to offer to bring in photos of her wedding when I asked if she was married.

Still, there is a complexity in politics, economics, history, security and race relations – among other things – that as a foreigner in South Africa I already find hard to unravel.  For one, the country has 11 official languages.  South Africa may have earned the name "rainbow nation," but at first glance Cape Town still seems extremely segregated.  The poverty I saw while driving past several townships –that remnant of apartheid referring to the urban living areas built on the periphery of towns and cities reserved for non-whites – is made even more stark by the natural beauty in which they exist.

Despite these complexities, I have read that South Africa is often seen at the "pot of gold at the end of the continent," which means it attracts a large number of immigrants and refugees.  And this, of course, is what also drew me to Cape Town.  I want to learn how to help refugees and started my internship at the center yesterday… Today I walked though the doors of the center and into a sea of refugees waiting to be seen by the social workers.  All morning I helped distribute food vouchers and this afternoon I helped with some of the assessment interviews, even putting my French to some use with a young woman from the DRC… Tomorrow morning I''m accompanying another social worker to one of the townships to do on-site assessments and to help distribute blankets.  Perhaps as is the case with social workers all over the world, I sense a very high risk of burnout in this line of work, and the staff at the center has been running around ragged since the attacks started about three weeks ago.  Despite the chaos, they have taken time to welcome me and I believe I will learn a great deal with them as my mentors.

TIP OF AFRICA, INDIAN OCEAN, NEXT STOP: ANTARCTICA

Two weeks in Cape Town and I''ve acquired new vocabulary from my South African housemates, including the accolade reserved for persons and events worthy of only the highest praise: legend.  If ever there were a legend week in my own life, I'd have to say this past one qualifies…This legend week also involved meeting a living legend: none other than Nobel Peace Prize winner and anti-apartheid activist Archbishop Desmond Tutu at an event for World Refugee Day.  Despite the gravity of the day''s focus and the vocalized outrage felt by many South Africans at the recent attacks directed against foreigners in their country, Archbishop Tutu displayed a keen sense of humor and made it a point to connect with the children called upon to read their poems and share their experiences as refugees in South Africa.

MMMM MZOLIS

During my morning commute to work I've taken to jotting down fragmentary scribbles that eventually coalesce into updates to friends and family, stopping occasionally to take in the mountain view or file dutifully off the taxi bus for the unfortunate passenger trying to exit the back seat. There was no shortage of thoughts demanding notation after spending an afternoon at Mzolis – an open air restaurant in the township of Guguletu that came recommended to me as a "must see" for Cape Town visitors… When the three of us drove up to Mzolis in the sky blue "Best Beetle" car rental, our friend Thembsi was on the phone saying, "I'll be there now." An hour later our trio was occupying one of the last free tables at the restaurant enjoying the sunshine and lively atmosphere wondering what had happened to our hostess. Here I must explain something about the phenomenon of so-called "Africa time" and the English lesson it necessitates: "now now" can reasonably be taken to mean the immediate future; "just now" introduces some parameters – maybe 5 to 30 minutes; "now", on the other hand, is a highly elastic concept defined only in the mind of the speaker. This wasn''t of great concern on a leisurely Sunday afternoon drinking ginger beer while chatting and listening to live free style rappers, but I''m finding it a challenge when I schedule a line-up of back to back interviews for the vocational skills training program for which I now have some responsibility at the centre. Even after the university cross-cultural communications classes and chapter in my "Insider's Guide to Cape Town", sometimes I still find it an enormous challenge to shed the expectation of Swiss precision and my own highly punctual nature as time ticks away. That being said, there is something to be said for a more relaxed pace of life.

-Jennifer Leland, pictured at right, interned at the Cape Town Refugee Centre from June to September, 2008