Cape Town!!!

Last week Tizzy, AJ, and I made our way down to Cape Town for our first trip out of the Gauteng province since arriving in South Africa. We stayed with the 7 Cape Town interns in their quasi-commune of a home and had a blast.

We arrived in Cape Town early in the morning, dropped our bags off at the intern house, and hopped back into the car where Jamieson took us to Khayelitsha, a township outside of Cape Town. Khayelitsha is where the Football for Hope Center is located, which is the place that Grassroot Soccer runs its programs out of. As part of the buildup to the 2010 World Cup, FIFA announced that they would be building 20 Football for Hope Centers throughout Africa. In FIFA’s own words, The Khayelitsha Football for Hope Centre … is part of “20 Centres for 2010”, the official campaign of the 2010 FIFA World Cup™ to promote public health, education and football in disadvantaged communities across Africa. These centers are meant to serve as community centers that provide a safe space for people to play soccer, receive life skills education, tutoring, and a host of other social initiatives. FIFA however, only builds these centers. They don’t run them. So instead, they hire organizations like GRS, that use sport for development, to manage the center and use its facilities to further enhance their programming.

Sketch of FFHC

While not nearly as fancy or technologically innovative as the Nike Center that we work out of in Soweto, the FFHC is in somr ways more effective. It is a much more public space, which allows for children to come onto and leave the property freely. There is a public dirt field, grass field, and turf field and you would be hard pressed to visit the center during the day and not find anybody using the fields – whether it be kids after school, coaches between interventions, or construction workers on their lunch break.

Additionally, there is a strong focus on education. While Talia, another one of the interns, helps to run the GRS Skillz portion of the center, Jamieson is in the process of developing a preschool curriculum, creating a library, and facilitating a reading group. With education being one of my strongest passions, I hope to bring some of these same initiatives to the Nike Center. Now, I don’t want to paint a picture of the Nike Center as this fortified space there no one in Soweto gets to use, but I do think it could do better. The center is in the middle of being handed over from Nike to the city of Johannesburg, and I think this transition will prove extremely beneficial with regards to further community programming and making the center more community friendly.

During the weekend, we went with the Cape Town interns to a concert called Rocking the Daisies, which might be one of the most hippie things I’ve ever done. Held about an hour outside of Cape Town, the concert had a theme of sustainability and environmental conservation. Thousands of people pitched their tents, pulled out their braiis, and listened to music from around South Africa and the world. It was kind of a mix between Jazz Fest and Lollapalooza…just the African version.

Top of Lion's Head

Unfortunately, when we got back to Cape Town the CTC (Cape Town Crew) had to go to work on Monday. So with one more day before heading home, the Joburg gang joined Dave – one of our friends from Davidson who is studying abroad at UCT – and decided that we were going to climb Lion’s Head. The hike up the mountain was beautiful, and actually proved a bit steeper than I initially thought it would be (that might just be my childhood fear of heights manifesting itself but who knows). It took about an hour to reach the top, but when we got there….wow. The view from the top of the mountain was absolutely unreal. We could see the entire city of Cape Town, Table Mountain, both the Atlantic and Indian oceans, Robben Island, and all of the amazing greenery and architecture that this city has to offer. Words simply can’t describe it.

Cape Town in general is an extremely beautiful and unique city. I doubt that there is any like it anywhere else like it in the world. An unconventional mix of European and African cultures, located at the convergence of the Atlantic and Indian oceans, with more mixed race people than I have ever seen in my entire life (the subject of race here in South Africa is to be the subject of another post).

If only Jess still wore her hair like this

Our time in Cape Town was a great break from the hustle of bustle of Joburg, and we’ll definitely be making our way back there in the near future. My reasons for back has also been bolstered by the news the my sister Jesse, aka J Smithers IV, aka Chubird, aka best sister ever, will be studying abroad in Cape Town next semester. It’ll be awesome to have Jess in the same country and I’m looking forward to us having some big time adventures.

On another note, I spent this past weekend in Pretoria filming a commercial for a company called Kaizania. The CEO of the company saw me at a slam and hired me to perform one of my pieces as part of their marketing campaign for a new website they’ve created aimed at increasing civic engagement. The filming was exhausting but really rewarding and I’m excited to see the final product. The video should be up within the next 2 weeks and I’ll be sure to post it when it becomes available.