love & madness & liberation

Hello loves,

I hope all is well. I'm sorry I haven't posted yet since I've been here! This is some unfinished reflection from last week. I have since learned a lot more, it is just not in writing yet.


From the moment we stepped off the airplane, there were nameless black people in reflective yellow jackets sitting on the ground in the shade under the ledge of the airport where the bags come in and riding the shuttle from plane to gate. Everyone on the flight was not black, though I realize now a few were colored.

My first views of the city itself were the same. I'm staying in Tamboerskloof, a definitely exclusive and white neighborhood. There is barbed wire atop cement walls around most houses, and pictures of security dogs. We were warned we could get shot if we ever tried to scale the wall if locked out. Many of the stores, especially things like fast food, have only white patrons and only black workers. On our drive the first day we went through Camps Bay, and past a stretch of restaurants on the beach at which every single waiter and waitress was black, and all the diners white. It was so strange at first I felt nauseated, and nervous all the time. We went to Woolworth’s, the grocery store, and looked at delicious prepared foods, wide varieties of chocolate and liquor, beautiful produce and beautiful white people. The cashiers were black. I felt nervous. All I bought was phone credit, and I didn’t know how.

A hundred and ten rand, she said. I didn’t want to break two hundreds so I asked Emma if she had ten cents. Both women cashiers looked uncomfortable and tried to explain my mistake. A rand cent is so small that they hadn’t even been present in my mind; all I meant was a ten rand coin. I think the cashiers know how to spend a rand cent.
At the fast-food chicken place Nando’s, where we went for lunch, the nervousness got me again. “Hot or mild?” asked the black woman taking my order. “Yeah, sounds great” I said. It wasn’t a yes or no.

It's so disconcerting, and yet I can feel myself already getting used to it. Living in Cape Town as a white student for a short amount of time seems to mean a whole lot of bourge-fest.