Melville!

Today was a long day of researching at work for my article. I'm trying to get as much done as possible before I leave for Cape Town on Thursday!

This weekend was very relaxing and fun. On Friday after work Anna and I caught a ride down to Melville with a coworker who was born and raised in Soweto and now lives in Melville. Anna and I stayed in Melville for the weekend to dogsit for an adorable golden retriever, Jaischa, and an old cocker spaniel, Tikki. Tikki was bit of a trouble maker tearing through the trash and wandering into rooms he knew he wasn't supposed to go in while Jaischa was an active 2 year old who tore up her pillow! We were also housesitting for a Dutch couple during their vacation. The woman is a freelance journalist and has a pretty awesome job. She writes stories on topics of her choice and films videoclips for Dutch media. However, there are some restrictions. She was hoping to write a story on the culture of funerals in Soweto, where there are often 50+ funerals per weekend—a mark of AIDS—causing funerals to become a social experience and integral part of the culture, but she said editors are not enthusiastic about “another story on HIV in Africa,” forcing her to chose a more entertaining topic.

We stayed in their lovely Meditteranean-style home with a beautiful porch, braai (bbq), pool and gardens. Our room and the porch also had a gorgeous, panoramic view of Johannesburg. I loved the house with dark wood, comfy sofas, a relaxing bed and black and white checkered kitchen floor. However it wasn't the easiest house to learn to live in due to the extensive security measures. When we first arrived, we were shown the emergency button and pepperspray right next to our bed in case anybody came in. Next we were shown the locks on all the doors and windows, which blinds to keep shut so that nothing could be seen from the street and how to set the alarm system. This was all in addition to the 10 foot high walls surrounding the home and cage over the front yard (in case people were able to get over the wall topped with barbed wire). We were instructed to enter and leave from the garage door, always watching to make sure the door closes completely. The front door was to be used only if there was an electricity outage (which happens often). This required reaching behind the door unlocking the lock, throwing off a heavy metal bar and opening the gate. Once inside the caged in front yard we unlocked the front door before quickly turning off the alarm system.

The home also had the mark of apartheid. There was a small shack in the backyard where the maid lived with a broken window and concrete floor. The neighboring homes all also had the shacks leftover from apartheid.

On Saturday evening we walked around the corner to explore the popular nighttime destination. There were many bars and restaurants full of people of every race and nationality imaginable. Melville is known for being a diverse neighborhood, while Pretoria is known to be one of the more racially divided cities. (An interesting side note is that the name Pretoria is changing to the name Tshwane to reflect African rather than Boer heritage). After the host asked us a bit about ourselves, he seated us at a table where he thought we would have fun. We met people from France, Mauritius, Sweden, Ireland, the U.S. and Holland just at our table. I’m not sure if it was a foreign hangout destination or the host just led us to the “foreign” area, but I have a feeling it was the latter.

Sunday we had a relaxed day exploring Melville. Melville is a small, funky neighborhood with people from diverse backgrounds. It has one main street with delicious Sushi, Thai/Vietnamese, Mexican, Portugese, French, Italian and African restaurants interspersed with a couple of used bookstores, gift shops and fancy hair salons. The street was cute, but very short, so we explored another cluster of stores. On the way we passed two churches. On one side of the street was a large, brick building in which Afrikaners streamed out after mass, on the other side was a smaller, white stucco building with solely black people who were relaxing after mass. We continued over a small hill and down to the next cluster of more practical shops—grocery store, an Internet café etc. There was also a “Cool Runnings,” which is a chain of restaurant/bars that are painted in red, yellow and green and feature reggae music (and lots of smoking!) at night.

I’m off to Cape Town on Thursday and will be staying in Long Street Backpackers. I’m looking forward to hopefully meeting some more interesting, young people since I will be staying there alone, but also seeing the Stanford girls working in Cape Town as much as possible! My roommates just returned from 2 weeks in Cape Town and have told me how fabulous a place it is, especially the setting beside the ocean, between two beautiful mountains.

P.S. I have pics from the house and pups will post (but probably after Cape Town)