Hello! This is my third blog post about my summer internship in Cape Town and it’s coming at the end of another great week! My internship has been going very well. I got a lot done on Tuesday and Wednesday. I finished reading the book I will be using to lead a book club and I am working on developing some workshops that I will be running for the student leaders of the organization. Right now I have two planned. One will focus on the differences between climate change, global warming and ozone depletion because I have noticed some confusion from the leaders and participants around these concepts. The other will focus activism and the importance of translating awareness and concern for the environment into activism. I have also been working on some surveys that I will be conducting to create a training booklet about running BEEP workshops for future student leaders. These surveys will be independent from my personal research. In addition to working, I also got a lot of good food. At work, we went back to the same restaurant (Kwa-Chicco) for local food and Wednesday night Kendall and I went to a great Thai restaurant (food pictured below) and went to bed early to get ready for what would be an even bigger day than we could have imagined.

Thursday was Youth Day in South Africa which is a day to commemorate the deaths of dozens of young protestors killed in 1976. This event was a turning point in the movement against apartheid and holds a lot of significance for South Africa. For Youth Day, Paige, Kendall and I went to an event organized by some of the student leaders in BEEP. It was a very interesting day. Kendall and Paige were made judges for the main event, a modeling competition, and I was a co-MC announcing the event with Mama K. In addition to the modeling, there was singing, dancing, rapping, poetry and multiple speeches about the significance of Youth Day and the importance of hope in the face of poverty. There were over 100 kids and parents in attendance and as the co-MC, Mama K had me dancing and mispronouncing Xhosa words to the amusement of all of them. I was definitely out of my comfort zone, but it was a very good experience. We didn’t get home until 8pm, an 11 hour day. Even though we were all exhausted, everyone had a great time.

On Friday, we went to print my surveys for my personal research at Western Cape University. It was a very nice campus and afterwards, Lindela brought us to Mzoli’s, a famous meat restaurant. As a vegetarian, it was an interesting (somewhat frightening) experience, but they had food I could eat and it was still very fun. On Saturday, I went on a hike with about 20 of the BEEP kids to Table Mountain. It was very misty and we eventually had to turn around, but it was a good experience and I was able to have many great conversations with the kids and Lindela. Some of the pictures from that hike are included below. At the end of the hike, I was able to distribute the first 20 surveys to the student leaders for my personal research. Hopefully I will be able to hand out the rest in this next week.

Saturday night, Kendall and I went to a place called East Asian Bazaar. We ate very good, extremely cheap Indian food. Some of those pictures are included below. We spent about $11 for food, drinks and ice cream for two (with left overs). We will definitely be going back. Sunday was a relaxed day, I did debate research, homework, and began my essay.

On Monday, we toured a Dutch colonial castle and went to the District 6 museum. It was a very interesting look at multiple periods in South Africa history. From the period of colonial rule where the Dutch and English exploited the indigenous populations for their benefits to one of the most famous moments in apartheid history where thousands of people were forcibly removed from their homes to make way for white development.

From the Roof of the Castle

The rest of the week was spent mostly working at my internship. On Tuesday, we brought the kids bowling to celebrate the start of their winter break which was very fun! Wednesday was spent going to schools to distribute letters for our winter programming and developing interviews for parents of the BEEP participants to gouge the support systems of the kids. On Thursday, we got down and dirty, literally. We worked in one of BEEP’s many community gardens: tilling the soil, planting spinach seedlings and watering. Lots of the kids got involved and it was so much fun! Today, Friday, I was lucky enough to get the day off because we worked last Saturday, which allowed me time to write this blog post. Today will be a good opportunity to relax and get some work done after an extremely hectic first three weeks. Overall, I’m beginning to really settle in here and I can’t wait to see what else Cape Town has in store.