Real World Cape Town

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

I just got into Cape Town last night after a full day of flying.  Before I take off to rural Zululand, I'll be living at the GRS intern house with 7 other interns who will be based in CPT for the next 12 months.  We’ve got a nice little pad right near the City Centre, a stone’s throw away from the Country Gardens.  Cape Town is a surreal city, an international crossroads that sits between beautiful beaches and mountains on the ecologically rich Cape peninsula. 

We dropped by the GRS headquarters this morning to meet the team.  Our commute is a 15 minute walk that takes us through the gardens past the Houses of Parliament and South African Library and finally through Greenmarket Square, where shoppers barter with local merchants and artisans along tightly packed rows of tents.  The clear weather today offered us a spectacular view of Table Mountain. 

An hour after arriving at the office, our HR director took us down the street to watch a few thousand striking government workers march, chant, and dance in protest in front of the parliament building in order to give us a flavor of the South African labor scene.  We felt a world away from our intern orientation in New Hampshire that ended just a couple days ago.

In NH, we spent the first couple sweaty days and nights in a log cabin, getting to know one another while doing teambuilding exercises, running through the GRS curriculum, preparing and eating meals, and hiking.  By we, I mean the 25 newly christened GRS interns, who are located in Lesotho, Zambia, Malawi, and South Africa (including Cape Town, Kimberley, Port Elizabeth, Johannesburg, and, last but not least, Mtubatuba).  A couple of current GRS employees ran the show, and several former interns shared their stories with us as well.  While I may not be the world’s most enthusiastic icebreaker participant, it was good to get everyone interacting, and I’m glad to be part of such an empathetic, open group.  Although I probably won’t be seeing some of these folks much at all going forward, a lot of interns do end up taking trips to visit each other over long weekends or on holidays.

2010 GRS Interns in NH

For the latter half of orientation, we were at an inn a few miles up the road from Hanover, NH learning more about HIV/AIDS and the ins and outs of Grassroot Soccer.  We got to meet the Board of Directors and other friends of GRS at a dinner on Saturday evening.  I talked with a couple people who have been to Mtuba; both emphasized that it is one of (if not the) most beautiful parts of the world that they’ve ever seen.

After an early awakening on Sunday morning, we flew from Logan to Dulles, where I vigorously consumed all things American, from NY-style pizza to Ben and Jerry’s ice cream to Budweiser.  As I boarded the plane, there was a moment of sheer panic as I realized that the largest man in the universe was sitting in my aisle seat.  I was able to humbly convince him to move one seat over, though this did little for my personal space.  Fortunately he was from Gambia, so he got off at our refueling stop in Dakar, Senegal, and I only had to spend half of our 18-hour stretch from Dulles to Jo-burg cramped against one of my armrests.