Wined and Dined

Saturday, June 7^th was dedicated to experiencing another aspect of South African culture—wine. South Africa is known all over the world because of the different quality of wine that can be found here. The wine actually has more alcohol in it because of how much sun there is during the summer time. [We were told more about why this does happen. However, there were some other important parts of the day that pushed this newfound interesting information out of my ears]. Before actually getting to the wine tasting, we stopped at a monument dedicated to the Afrikaans language. Afrikaans is a mixture of Dutch, German, and French. It’s known as the language of white people in South Africa and dominated life here… so much so in that a person needed to know this language in order to attend a university. I can’t deny; it was beautiful! The monument was on top of a hill in an already mountainous region of the country {near Stellenbosch}. So in the distance we could see other mountains, fancy-pants houses, and other buildings.

Here's a picture of the first vineyard we toured.

Back to the wine tasting part of the program… we stopped at the first place to taste wine (when people go on wine tastings in South Africa, they normally do four places in one day. Let’s just say, I’m pretty sure that I would not have been able to handle four). Did you know that if you are walking in a vineyard, you’ll see a lot of rose bushes? Roses are one of the most susceptible plants to disease. So if a vineyard owner notices diseases in her roses, she can act quickly to save her grape vines. We learned other random facts about the vineyard such as the fact that weddings can be held there for about R200 a head. That’s about 30 US dollars per person. Can you believe how cheap a wedding would be? It would have been amazing to have been there during the preparation for a wedding. (I used to want to be a wedding planner so this stuff still has a special place in my heart… thank you J-Lo). We were treated to grapes, crackers, and fancy-pants cheeses when we finally sat down to taste wine. It really is an art, tasting wine. There are special ways to look at the color and determine what it means, along with smell and viscosity. It’s too bad that I’m not the biggest fan of wine. But some of them were good, and I ended up getting one bottle of exclusively South African wine as a present for 70 Rand. This is the equivalent of 7 American dollars. I still can’t get over that.

We headed to our next destination for a fancy-pants lunch. [By now, you’ve noticed my new word of choice: “fancy-pants.” I say this when I think that things are classier than my means or upper class in my definition]. We had chicken cordon bleu with salad. To be honest, it was just average. I find this to challenge my initial thoughts of what it means to be fancy-pants. It’s coming from the upper-class to me and to not have my food be amazing was almost disappointing. Maybe I am just a steak and potatoes or chicken curry and rice girl.

After lunch came our final wine tasting site. We had our choice of what we wanted to taste [better than the last vineyard]. I decided to bring back dessert wine since I had never had it before in the states (not that I would have anyway because I’m not 21……). I paid around three American dollars for each bottle I brought! The rest of the time here was left to exploring a small market-type area. Some of the group went to find where they were keeping the cheetahs. Yes, there were cheetahs at a vineyard; you could even pet them if you wanted if you had enough Rand to pay. Does this make sense to you? It really didn’t to me. Let’s exploit animals as a way to get more funding… like the owners of the vineyard aren’t already rich.

I was in and out of sleep for most of the way to the first destinations and missed the scenery part of the tour. Seriously, South Africa is one of the most beautiful places on earth with rolling mountains and grassy prairies all over. But I still remember the funny and almost disgusted feeling I had when we got closer to Mowbray. On the way, not only do we pass our home township of Gugulethu but Khayelitsha and Langa as well. Khayelitsha is one of the biggest townships in South Africa with around 1 million people living there. Now, in Gugulethu we stayed in houses and there were shacks around them. From what we learned about Khayelitsha, there are mostly shacks there. Just by passing in a tour bus I could tell that it was in poor shape. Some of the shacks didn’t even look sturdy, simply five pieces of tin thrown together in the form of a house. People have to live there; some never even see life outside of the townships. I’m sorry, if it was me… I don’t know if I could be happy living there… especially with the marvelous views of table mountain off in the distance. It would be like I could reach out and grab a new life but always being just short. Don’t worry, after feeling like this for some time on the bus we couldn’t see townships anymore. Nope, it was back to stellar views of the richer side of Cape Town. It was like an outside force was trying to push the bad from my mind.

So that’s just a slice of my week in Gugulethu (and more). I have a wonderful place to come back to someday with people who will remember me as I will them. You have to remember that I was in a safer part of Gugulethu, in the small community of JL Zwane. There is a bigger world outside of it filled with high rates of crime and HIV/AIDS. It was a life changing experience to say the least; I know I will come home a new person. Not only that, but I will come home with the many stories that I have heard. I will keep the spirit of the JL Zwane community center alive by sharing them with people in person. My only hope is that people at home will begin to understand the struggles found here.