"Jen?!....JEN!" Wait, you cannot be serious. You're not telling me that within two days of my arrival to Cape Town someone is already yelling my name from across the street. But indeed, it is true. It's my new brunch friends from a couple mornings prior. I think I'm starting to like this place...
Well my friends, it's official. Within five days of my arrival to Cape Town, I got a job at a martini and tapas bar...and it is awesome. It fits right in with the story, I think.
Cape Town is nothing like Kenya...nothing. I had an extremely refined and trendy boutique owner tell me, from behind designer sunglasses and a babydoll dress, that they were very third world. I smiled politely. My first few days here went a little something like this: sitting on the floor in the middle of a hundred rowdy Afrikaans in the upstairs of a smoky pub watching rugby, then illegally scaling the side of a building and dancing on the roof, sitting on the top of a lion statue at midnight, climbing a mountain in the dark, staying out until five in the morning, and getting both an interview and a job offer in the same day. My first roommate in the hostel was a 61 year old woman from New Zealand, who within the first moments of meeting poured me half her bottle of wine. On my second night I spent five hours at a Cuban themed dive called Che Bar where I met people with names like Gideon, Kellen, and Ronelle, and I've been running into them ever since. Today at a shop on Long Street I heard a couple speaking Kiswahili and almost died. I spoke with them a little, mainly because I only know a little, and it reminded me of how much Kenya feels like home, and how much I treasure it.
So much has already happened, and it's only been a week. Cape Town is a mixture of San Francisco, New York, and Africa. The backwards culture shock is strong, but in a good way. I'm looking at everything wide-eyed like that of a child seeing the world for the first time. I wasn't ready to be thrown into this, but I think that's the best way for it to happen. I'm wondering how much longer this is all going to feel like a fairy tale. I mean, I could go home...but then what?
I presently shower daily, just because I can. There are cement sidewalks and real mattresses. I drink tap water, have real flushing toilets, water that doesn't run out and electricity that always works. I get paid for working, I eat tapas. I got my hair cut for the first time in over six months. Is it great? Yes. Is it better than Kenya? Ha...never that, never that...
