Day One in Cape Town

Yesterday was a strange day.

We disembarked the ship to find the beautiful waterfront, just as we were told we would.

If you took elements of the Glendale Galleria, Downtown Disney, and Pier 39, and mixed them together with a stir stick, you’re able to get a ruff picture of what I am talking about.

Everyone relished in the comfort of the familiar, enjoyed some retail therapy, and walked around taking pictures and eating ice cream cones (along with some of the ten-percent white South Africans).

That afternoon, I had an FDP for my Warfare and the Modern Era class to three different black townships, as well to the District Six Museum, which preserves for the world the reality of apartheid in South Africa (officially revoked in 1994…I was five years old. If you’re not quite sure exactly what apartheid is, please google.)

So we got on our coach bus, drove 10 minutes, and got off our coach bus in a shantytown where one million men, women, and children make their homes out of cardboard and variegated tin. Others live in horribly dilapidated government housing with two families to a room the size of a master bath.

We walked through these streets like a herd of little, white ducks following our tour guide like mother hen, our professor reminding us to stay close and to hurry up, as we had a schedule to keep. Pictures were snapped, smiles exchanged, a few darling little black children held, and back on the coach we went.

Back to the waterfront.

Where everyone relished once again in the comfort of the familiar, enjoyed some retail therapy, walked around eating their ice cream cones and waiting anxiously for the clubs to open for the night.

I’m troubled.

And wrestling.

The world is such a lot for my heart to handle.

Love. Anna