3:30 p.m. February 11, 2007 Newlands House

"Don't let your studies get in the way of your education". This piece of advice charges from the lips of my program director Melissa Steyn, as she addresses a lecture hall filled with international students. Monday marked the start of the business of orientation and the requisite course registration (which is still conducted here through a mixture of signatures, stamps and qeues that wrap around the halls and down the staircases). We are toured around the ivy-covered, formerly whites-only campus. We are given lectures on culture shock and have our pictures taken for a UCT ID card. Campus police and local police offer mixed messages-- have fun but "don't take the mushrooms they offer you on Long Street". My roommate, Shoo Shoo (this is the nickname that has stuck ever since I attempted to pronounce his last name) laughs a knowing laugh. Each day I'm awoken by a racket of unfamiliar bird calls and the neighbor's dog. I sit in the lecture hall and stare at the peeling skin on the backs of the sunburnt students. There are various activities planned for us-- an African Drum workshop (which becomes a game of monkey-see, monkey-do) a welcome reception, and the Freshers' Braai ("braai" = bbq) on the UCT rugby field.
All of these events are lovely and I do indeed feel most at home on campus-- well, not exactly at home, but it is an atmosphere I'm comfortable negotiating. But the words of my professor ring in my head. Because I have RAndy as my guide, because I am a student from an economically wealthier/dominating country, because I am white-- I am priviledged to a certain Cape Town. Randy drives me and his parents to the top of Signal Hill which has one of the most stunning views of the mountains, the ocean and the city. We shoot down to Tableview (just North of the city) and watch the sun set over the Atlantic as Kite surfers fly into the air off the spray of the ocean. We stretch out on the grass and drink a cold beer before we're off again for a delicious seafood dinner. The next evening we walk along the beach at Camps Bay, which could easily be mistaken for Miami with all the trendy bars and restaurants. The beautiful people laugh and smile, the tide crashes, the world turns.
But everywhere you go-- no matter how high your walls are, how fancy the restaurant, or secure the locks, there is a presence of tension. Perhaps moreso in these spaces of wealth and priviledge where there is farther to fall- or rather a strong fear of being touched by poverty, victimized by crime.. and of course, tainted by HIV/AIDS.
1 in 16 people in Sub-Saharan Africa has HIV. I stop to consider 16 people-- a large dinner party of friends, a few commuters in a car on the L train, a small classroom of elementary students. The wealth disparity in South Africa is as dramatic as its mountain ranges. Poverty not only means prostitution but also lack of access to anti-retroviral treatments, MTCT (mother to child treatments), education, etc. In South Africa, one of Africa's richest nations, only 12.6% of pregnant women received MTCT in 2006. From husband to wife; from lover to lover; from mother to child, the tide crashes, the world turns.