It amazed us to realize just how many languages are
spoken in Cape Town let alone South Africa. Portia, one of our IES guides,
revealed to us that every student must learn both their mother language and
English, essentially creating a country of people who speak multiple languages.
Our perception of the origin of the Afrikaans also shifted. We originally
thought it was the “oppressor’s language.” However, we later it was created by
slaves in the Dutch kitchens from languages around the world. Even within the
English language, the dialect here is so different from back home. Just trying
to ask the waiter for “watt-er” (which we eventually learned to pronounce as
“whot-taa”) took a few tries.
We were also really surprised by the amount of diversity in Cape Town. We spent a lot of time in the Maymester seminar talking about the differences between black and white South Africans that many of us thought we would mostly just see those two groups. However, there are a lot of colored people, and many of them are very hard to tell which ethnicity they are – some look like light skinned black people, others Middle Eastern, and quite a few Asians. It was interesting that the cities and restaurants/bars aren’t as segregated as we though they would be because there were people of all colors inside, but we noticed that people tended to stick to their own groups when out in public. We were also surprised that there is a fairly large Muslim population here, which was really brought to our attention at the welcome dinner and when we heard the prayer calls throughout the city.
We did learn about xenophobia before we left, and many of us were under the impression that Cape Town was excluded from the violence. While there are no protests or demonstrations in Cape Town, we've learned that locals here are still affected by xenophobia. When we went to a salon we met a woman working there named Dada. Dada is from Burundi and fled to South Africa five years ago to escape the violence. Dada's sister was shot the day before while she was driving in Cape Town because she is not from South Africa. She survived but Kristen asked her if she felt safe, and Dada said no. While there are no mass demonstrations here, xenophobia in South Africa is still impacting locals and their quality of life here in Cape Town.
Katie, Kristen, & Amanda
