Poor little rich girl

In order not to mislead the audience (I take you all very seriously, you know) I've posted some pictures of how the majority of South Africans live. Townships -- all-black suburbs that grew in size as a result of Apartheid -- are a common sight along the highways and Kayamandi, a township directly outside of Stellenbosch, has over 30,000 people living mostly in shanties on a 75-hectare area. Suffice to say, it's pretty crowded. When I vented frustration to my history professor about going to restaurants with all-white clientele and an all-black staff, he mentioned that there isn't really a substantial black middle class. Instead, he suggested I go to Spur, this really kitschy Tex-Mex wannabe place, since I was likely to run into clientele of all colors there. The wait staff, though, would still be black, as white waiters tend to work at the high-end restaurants. I guess it wasn't a serious solution to the fact that the society still is very much stratified by race, but it did solve the "where can I find a milkshake for under R15?" question.

So of course your next question is about the white couple pictured above. I only post this because I saw The Curious Case of Benjamin Button last night (it's still a new release here in S.A.) and, though it's not even closely related to the short story, the love interest is Daisy, who of course we remember from The Great Gatsby. Seriously, those Fanning children are cash cows. Anyway, following a sneaking suspicion I had that F. Scott Fitzgerald was super hot (he just writes so beautifully) I found a picture of him and Zelda. He's not hot, but they're pretty cute. And they really knew how to party, apparently, though what with her accusations of him being gay and his sleeping around with prostitutes to prove her wrong, I guess their marriage was a bit unconventional. Long story short, this photo is completely irrelevant. Next.




These are from Mosselbaai -- we drove to what we thought was the city center. Wrong. I don't know what first tipped us off: the mosque, the abnormally large number of not-white people. Either way, we weren't in Kansas anymore.









Since Cape Town Airport isn't really in Cape Town, the drive to Stellenbosch after first arriving here was kind of startling. This was basically the first thing I saw in Africa, and it's probably a little more representative than college-student-town Stellenbosch, which is a bit of an affluent Afrikaner bubble.














I kind of pulled the camera out to take these pictures while we were driving away. I mean, I was already getting stares. Why not just be exploitative?




















I cheated -- this is from Heidelberg, not a township. But you get the idea.