South Africa - 2

A driver named Calvin was waiting for me at the gate of the Cape Town airport. My flight got in on time at 11PM.

We left, heading for Stellenbosch.

A little kid wearing a canvas jacket was standing on the median at a stop sign, his hand out. Calvin shook his head. The kid sat down on the curb and picked at his hair with a comb.

There was a Christian talk show on the radio. It was going back and forth from Afrikaans to English. The host was talking to call-in guests about how long they’ve all been serving the Lord.

I asked Calvin what Stellenbosch was like. Very conservative, he said.

We drove past walled neighborhoods, then out to a winding road through black hills. The only lights were out over the triumphant gated entrances to vineyards.

We got into Stellenbosch after a half hour.

Calvin slowed as some kids were walking down the street. He shouted "ahoy" at them.

We got to Banghoek Place, the hostel where I was staying.

Calvin walked to the gate with me, leaned his head close, and whispered the password for the keypad.

The front doors to the lounge were locked. There were some kids eating and one got up and walked outside and opened another gate for us.

Calvin led me in and pointed upstairs to number eight, my room, and gave me the key.

I didn’t know what kind of room I’d be staying in. I figured it’d be a shared dorm.

I opened the door.

It was a single room. It had its own bathroom, a queen-size bed with high thread-count white sheets that you really had to yank at to untuck. There were animal pelts on the floors and designer lamp shades made with recycled soda cans on the nightstands.

There was a brown gift bag on the bed.

Inside was a new cell phone, granola, juice boxes, a carton of milk, dried fruit, biltong (dried meat), peanuts, a bunch of bananas, and a signed welcome letter from Bradley.

I washed up and got into bed. A mosquito came in and was flying by my ear and keeping me awake. I turned on the lights and saw it on the wall and killed it with my slender edition of "Waiting for the Barbarians". There was blood on the cover.

I went to sleep.

* * *

In the morning I ate breakfast and read and drank some complimentary rooibos tea, which is grown in the Cape.

I looked around the place. A concrete wall surrounded the hostel. There were four wires suspended above it. It was an electric fence.

Bradley came at 10. I had been sitting on a sofa, waiting, looking towards the front gate and the street.

I saw a tall guy walking up. He was in the shade of a tree. I thought he was black. Then he got a little closer and I thought he was coloured. Then he came into the lounge and I saw he was white and tan. This was Bradley.

We walked through campus to his office. There weren't any sidewalks until close to the university buildings and student housing.

School had just started for the year. It was bright and hot and crowded. There were shorts, dresses and sandals. The buildings and lawns and students looked clean and well kempt.

Stellenbosch is one of the few South African universities that still teach in Afrikaans. The campus signs are in Afrikaans and English.

Bradley took me to his office and served me some more rooibos tea. He teaches geography at the University of Cape Town and works at Stellenbosch for CIEE.

He gave me a short version of the study abroad, welcome-to-Africa tips and rules. He went over my itinerary for the week, with some trips to Cape Town and some free time to wander through Stellenbosch.

Bradley had spent time in Latin America, too. I asked if he still read any Spanish lit. He said he liked post-coup Chilean stuff. He said it fast and it sounded like “Postkoochelean”. I remained quiet and nodded my head until I parsed the phrase and figured out what he meant.

We left to go eat lunch with one of his assistants, a recent-grad named Joe.

We went to a café called The Nook, a place painted what I guess would be Tiffany Blue and had thin chrome chairs on the patio and Death Cab for Cutie and Iron and Wine playing on the speakers. I felt like I was in the North Shore of Chicago.

The waitress came. Joe ordered a Thai chicken sandwich. I ordered a Thai chicken sandwich. Bradley ordered one, too. He made a joke about there being enough for three. The waitress didn’t get it. None of us looked at each other.

We sat and ate and talked. Joe studied philosophy, like me. Unlike me, he did what a self-respecting philosophy student should do and studied Greek and Latin. He’s written journalism, too. He’s thinking of doing a Masters in linguistics next year.

He’s the co-host of a popular afternoon-drive radio show. It’s a sports show where every so often the hosts go out and do something and bring listeners with and let the sponsors come on air and talk about what the hosts used as they did some interesting and amusing athletic outdoor thing.

We finished our sandwiches. We got more drinks. Me, a latté. Bradley, a cappuccino. Joe, another coffee with a side of honey.

Bradley left and Joe took me through the downtown.

The buildings are whitewashed and glow in the sun. Many of them are Cape Dutch style, with thatch roofs and tall curling gables.

It’s a tourist town, with big buses passing through the narrow streets. There’s Italian gelato, gourmet hamburgers, an Ernie Els restaurant called Big Easy, used bookshops and home ware stores and art galleries. One shop had large black women seated out front in traditional dress working on looms.

There’s old historical buildings still, like a magistrate’s court with a rose garden in front and the original town cathedral, called the Mother Church.

Joe took me to one of the campus bookstores. I couldn’t believe all the Routledge philosophy editions they had there. More than I’d ever seen in the U.S. or Canada.

We left and went to a bar Joe spends a lot of time at called The Mystic Boer. It’s got a lot of nostalgic Afrikaner stuff nailed to the walls like a TGIFridays in America. He said he DJs there sometimes, with CD turntables.

Joe left and I walked back to my hostel. Bradley came at six and got me for dinner.

Joe’s radio show had just ended, he said. We drove back downtown and parked and a guy in a neon vest came over and helped us pull-in. That was the car guard, the guy who tries to make sure no one steals your stuff while you’re eating or shopping or whatever.

Bradley said that a lot of car guards in Johannesburg are immigrants from other, usually Francophone African countries. He said they’re often well-educated and get brought here by recruiters for “job opportunities”. Bradley said there he just speaks French to them.

We went to the gourmet burger restaurant and met Cezanne there, another assistant.

Cezanne was a champion junior tennis player but blew out his shoulder just before university. He studied accounting but is now trying to get to Brazil to teach English.

Bradley said Brazil’s like a Creole South Africa.

Cezanne got to talking about tourists and how they expect there to be huts and tribes and spears and lions when they get to South Africa. He said he’s never been to a tribal village his whole life.

Bradley said people might complain how here across the street for instance there’s a Cape Dutch building next to a Victorian building, but that is just what makes this place what it is. And that there’s a Porsche SUV driving down this street, but shanty towns ten minutes away.

We drank white wine and ate our gourmet burgers and our French fries served in slim metal canisters.

Bradley asked for the bill. He said never let anyone take your credit card in South Africa. Even if you pay at a restaurant they’ll bring a machine out to you.

The waiter came out with the machine. We paid, said bye to Cezanne, gave the car guard a few coins and left.

Cezanne was coming in the morning to drive me to Cape Point, the southwestern tip of the continent.

I shut the windows so the mosquitoes wouldn’t get in.