Busy as a bumble bee!

The past week has been packed with activity, which is good because then I don’t have to spend time in my barren looking room. Four white walls and a sink can get boring to look at.

Last night I went to a show at the nunnery, a small black box theater on campus. The group, the Frown Family Caravan, played “post-war, gypsy, folk” music, as it was described to me. The lead singer sounded (and acted) a lot like mellow Regina Spektor. It was nice.

The night before that, IHRE went to Amandla: Fragments of Struggle, a musical journey through the life of Nelson Mandela. I felt a little out of place because the narrator would often call out a word and the audience would chant back with a different saying. Here’s an example:
Narrator: “Amandla!” (A Zulu word meaning ‘power’)
Audience: “Awethu!” (‘To us’).
There was also a section in Afrikaans. Too bad I don’t speak Dutch.

The night before THAT, my group was on the show African Views, sort of like 60 minutes (except it’s only 20 minutes), getting interviewed about our rural stay and our opinions on human rights in South Africa. We are going to go back on the show in November to see if our opinions have changed. That is, if the show is still running, since the South African Broadcasting Company is something like 800 million Rand in debt.

And a few days before THAT, we went on a tour of Soweto, one of the poorest, most violent areas in Johannesburg. It is also the place where Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu grew up. Coincidently, they lived on the same street, the only street in the world to have two Nobel Prize winners grow up on it. After that, we went to the Apartheid Museum. The museum was nice, but the gift shop definitely needs some work. All of the shirts said “WHITES ONLY” and then Apartheid Museum in smaller print. Why would I ever buy that?

I’m going on a three day safari this weekend with a friend from Wellesley who is doing an internship at a hospital in Cape Town. We’re going to Kruger National Park. Above is a picture of Paul Kruger, the person the park is named after.

Oh yeah, I also started classes this week. They are going well.