Goodbye IHP...

Okay, so it's clearly been over a month since I blogged and in fact it has been so long that IHP has come to an end, but it didn't feel right not to write a final entry. So obviously I won't be able to capture most of what happened in the last five (?) weeks, but I'll try.

The IHP program in South Africa was the hardest and the most rewarding for me. I have loved Cape Town and found it to be one of the most beautiful places I've ever been, physically and otherwise, but also seen firsthand the devastation that Apartheid brought to so many of South Africa's people and the effects of those policies that, while themselves no longer in existence, continue to permeate every inch of Cape Town and beyond.

Part of the program was to spend 10 days in Zwelethemba, a rural black township about an hour and a half from Cape Town. Coming in the middle of the program, my time in Zwelethemba taught me the realities of what I'd been learning about in our classroom back in Cape Town--the arbitrary poverty created by the government intended to exclude and alienate one race for the sake of another. Though the people of Zwelethemba were some of the most welcoming I've ever met, it was impossible to ignore the striking differences in quality of life and availability of resources in Zwelethemba as compared with affluent Cape Town. In Khaylitsha, a township right outside of Cape Town where we spent considerable time, it is even more obvious: most people live in shacks, and the rate of HIV infection is as high as 80%.

Cape Town is also one of the first places I've been that I've felt unsafe in my surroundings. Even in India, where they warned us of all of the dangers that lurked around the corners, I felt safe walking the streets at night with just one other student. There was a sense in India that you were never really alone-Bangalore never really got quiet. In Cape Town, we were told never to walk in the neighborhood where our host families lived-the Bo Kaap-after 10pm, even with a group of students. A number of us got mugged or nearly mugged (myself included), some in broad daylight. There is the sense that there is such desperation in this city that it is every man for himself. I started to feel like everywhere I went, there was potential for something bad to happen to me. That's a feeling I've never really had to deal with before, and though I really do love this city, I'm not sure I could ever give up my sense of security in order to live here.

I did learn more on this part of the program that I think I did anywhere else, and there are endless things to see and do here. Though most weekends we spent in Cape Town were consumed with work, we did manage to get out to the Old Biscuit Mill market-a great outdoor market on Saturday mornings-and to Cape Point on several weekends. At the end of the program we spent four days in Malmesbury, a beautiful town outside of Cape Town with nothing but mountains for miles.

A little over a week ago the IHP group departed, while I stayed for another couple of weeks to spend time with Deacon, who flew in a week ago, and my family who lives here in the Bo Kaap. It was really hard to say goodbye to the group-some of the best friendships I have made in my life and the only group of people I've ever really been a part of that care about the world in the way I do. Traveling with 32 interesting, engaged and engaging people was one of the greatest experiences I've had, and I'm really sad that it's over. I'm also sad that my traveling experience is essentially over, and that this is the only time I will probably be able to see the world through the lense of IHP. It didn't really feel like my abroad experience would ever come to an end, and I..really wish it hadn't.

Having Deacon here has been really fun though, and I've had the opportunity to do all the touristy things I didn't get to do with IHP. So far we're gone up Table Mountain, visited the aquarium and planetarium, seen the penguins at Boulders Beach, spent the day at Kirstenbosch-botanical gardens that would be really amazing were it summer-spent a few days in a wine town visiting vineyards, and spent time with a few IHPers who are still in Cape Town. Monday we fly to Port Elizabeth to spend three days at a game reserve to hopefully see the big 5! Winter is just setting in in South Africa, so I'm getting excited to go home to summer, do my laundry, and not feel like a guest for the first time in almost five months. For now I am trying to soak up the last days of my wonderful abroad experience!