Passion Gap (: hehe

Our driver here is simply referred to as “Uncle” here. Uncle picked us up bright and early to go for registration at the University of Cape Town. He was the cutest man ever! He is so silly and friendly—we are going to have a great time with him, I can already tell. UCT is at the base of the mountains, which is the coolest thing ever. They look amazing from afar, and are very nice up close. This didn’t take long at all, and then we were dropped off at Miles’ home stay to await our tour of the city. Neither Avril nor Marion was taking us on the tour, but their friend Colleen, who is an actual tour guide for the city, and an incredible historian. She was AMAZING. She knew everything like the back of her hand, and fed us history nonstop for 11 hours. It was quite intense, but she definitely knew her stuff and I learned SO much. I learned about the culture, the history of South African and why the people might do the things they do, how things are now, and we got to see a lot of the major townships and places within the city. We learned a lot about the apartheid and how it destroyed all of the peace that was within the whole city, and created turmoil, hate and violence. Everyone was forcibly removed from their homes, classified into either white, black, or colored, and placed into a designated spot of land based on their classification. The whites were the best off, the blacks the worst, and colored in the middle. We visited Langa, Khayelitsha, Philani and Guguletu; all townships with between 1-2 million residents each. We saw a place called district six, which is a town that used to house every race before the apartheid, and we visited the district six museum, which was all about the apartheid and the history that came along with it. We visited a place in Philani that was sponsored by a Swedish doctor. It was a nutritional center where mal-nutritioned children could come to be nursed back to health, and it taught women a trade so that they could work. We got to go in and see the women learning to weave and sew etc. It was an amazing project; I bought some of the things they made from grass and recycled material to support the organization. We also got to see a Muslim area called Bo-Kaap, which is most famous for all of the colorful houses. But, we learned that it was colorful because of all of the Malaysian influence. We met a lady named Beauty in one of the townships who had her own business from home, and was influenced to start a bed and breakfast by her neighbor Vicky, who was world renowned bed and breakfast owner. She was very famous because it was the only bed and breakfast in a township that gave you the feel of township life. We learned why there are so many gangs, including “hard livings” and “the Americans” hahaha, and we learned that the most popular drug here is something they refer to as Tik, or crystal meth. It is even sold at school and children as young as 8 have been found to take it. That breaks my heart and is probably the most horrible thing I have heard. The last ‘notable’ thing I learned about was the “passion gap”. Some women here take out their four front teeth in order to better give oral sex to their partners. That’s probably the craziest thing I’ve ever heard! Euh. The tour was overall very informative and gave me a fabulous background on South Africa—I wish I would have gotten this tour when I first arrived, but later is better than never.