Tire Swing-Kimya Dawson

I am now officially living in my room, which is in a building that my fingerprint will get me into… you have no idea how happy these two things make me!

Friday, I was still in the vacation res, doing orientation activities (basically just going to a seminar on community engagement, which is their term for community service… It has something to do with implications for mutual gains from partnering with the community, as opposed to going in to fix all the poor people’s problems) and finishing registration for my classes, which are all set. Friday night, Jill somehow got invited to the dinner that an Economics professor was hosting for the students from Boston College (I actually have no idea how she did this) and invited me along with her. It ended up being a fun evening; I knew both of the BC girls because we had been attending orientation together, and there were some post grad students there, one of whom was a BC grad who has come back for a year to work in an AIDS community center. It’s not exactly a clinic, but a place for kids (and I think adults, too) who have been affected by AIDS to receive services. Jillian (the BC grad) is working on planning a camp for high school-aged kids, as well as mentoring services for school children. It was fun to hear her stories of attending Rhodes, as well as those of the other post-grads—including the professor’s son—who were with us, and the food was great.

Saturday morning we moved into our permanent housing… I am in Beit House, which is really central on campus (right across the street from the library, and I can get to the Biological Sciences building in under two minutes) and I love my new room. Although I no longer have a balcony, my room is really nice, and it is so clear that I am in a girl’s res now… there are shiny star stickers on my door, and everything this year is done in a 1920’s theme, so there are feathers and sequins on my door and in the hall. If that is not enough to persuade you, there are also full-length mirrors in every hall and in the landings of the stairs, and my curtains match the duvet on my bed.  All of the rooms are singles (the girls here are confused as to why anyone would ever live in a double) and I have never had so much closet space to myself in a dorm before. In fact, I have never had closet doors at all, which is an experience I enjoy very much. My room has a cute little sink in the corner, a vanity with a bunch of cubbyholes surrounding it, and an electric heater, which I appreciate very much (despite the fact that the general rule of “hot air rises” doesn’t seem to be considered when the placements of the heaters was determined… they are all higher than the tops of the doorframes). I have pushed the desk under the window and hung up all of the pictures I brought with me—just 68 or so—and with pictures on the walls and all of my stuff unpacked, I finally feel settled.

Saturday afternoon, I went on a tour of the townships with about half of the international students. It was an interesting experience; obviously, it felt weird to be going on a tour to the other side of the tracks or “under the bridge” which is the expression that people have used here, but our guide (who owns the tour company) lives in the township, and it was a good opportunity for me to get out and see them, since they aren’t places that I could just wander to on my own without someone who knew the area. We had lunch at a woman’s home restaurant that serves traditional Xhosa food, which was delicious. I particularly liked the bread, which she baked by putting the dough over the meat in the oven to steam. We walked around some, and went to an artists’ collective, which is housed in a building that the police used during apartheid for interrogations… it has more recently been given back to the community and put to better use. We also visited Home of Joy, which is an orphanage in a woman’s home; she just started taking in babies that were abandoned and left at the local hospital to build herself a family. She has (I think) 19 kids now from 6 weeks to 16 years old, and I got to play with the cutest little baby in a fuzzy onesie to keep him warm in the cold weather.

After getting back to campus (I managed to get into my res by pure luck, as my fingerprint hadn’t been taken yet) some of us decided to go out for some tea and coffee, which is harder than it sounds at 5pm on a Saturday. A lot of the shops in town close around 3pm on Saturday and stay closed through Sunday, although you can find some placed that are open if you hunt. We were successful in our hunt, and prepped for dinner with hot drinks and scones (I feel like I am becoming more British daily). On my afternoon visit to the res, I had run into one of the sub-wardens at Beit (they are similar to RAs; the actual warden is a professor, often someone with a family, although I don't think our warden and her husband have any young kids), and she gave me her number so I could get back in after dinner. I made it into the building three times in one day… quite a feat for someone who can’t unlock her own front door.