After the field placement, I stayed an extra 5 days to explore this beautiful country even more. I met great people along the way throughout my time there and had some fabulous (& some dangerous) and no-so-hot experiences. How enlightening it was also to hear the views from others about my country, some of which I have had discussions regarding with fellow Americans.
In addition, my adventures gave me the following: two safaris (game reserves as they are called) with one in a traditional safari truck and one in a car, a visit to Lion Park (one of the safaris) where I pet the lions. Of course, I could not resist. This is also where I fed the ostriches and was bitten...twice!! Who gets bitten by an ostrich?! Me, apparently. Did that stop me? Nope, I went right back to feeding all three. The giraffe was too preoccupied and likely too full to let me feed him. I shopped and shopped; ate some absolutely delicious food, wanted to go cage diving with the sharks, but I had no time; saw the gorgeous African coast and where the Indian and Atlantic oceans meet; visited my 2nd World Wonder called Table Mountain (my 1st was Machu Picchu in Peru); visited a wine vineyard (I may not drink, but I enjoyed myself); went to Robben Island -where Nelson Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years in prison-, by ferry (and relieved myself of the breakfast granola bar I had due to the motion sickness); went to a Starkfontein, a cave that has been there for years, which was dark, cold, and deep. We literally crawled, slid, bent, etc through this cave. Other adventures were that when I first went to the airport to leave, my flight was later cancelled, then the next day the flight was delayed twice. When I finally made it to S.A., my luggage was also delayed and I did not receive it until two days after my arrival into the country and my laptop was missing from it! I bruised my shin with the iPad, the strap on my purse finally broke with eveything in it, a cab driver took me to the wrong hotel, and so forth. Certainly, more has happened, but this is already very lengthy.
One night in Cape Town (a suburb outside of it), while looking for a restaurant to dine in, a friend and I were almost hit by a car! You have to remember that South Africans drive on the opposite side of the road than in the United States. While I already knew this, I still stepped into traffic looking in the direction that I would at home, not thinking about the road differences, thus the on-coming traffic almost hit us. I was pretty far out into the street, further than my friend. Yep, I even heard the car horns blaring at me, but it still didn't register that they were blowing at me, the crazy American in the street! Too funny :). Then, not even 10 minutes later, we get picked up by the police while just walking down the street still looking for a place to eat. He pulls up and my friend stopped, while I continued walking. She yelled to me "that's our"...I thought she said "that's our ride", so I said "oh no, that's not my ride" LOL, so I kept going. Well, my dissertation is on sex trafficking (hers also), so I was not getting into any unknown vehicles. I stopped to turn around and see what she was doing, only to realize that she had said "that's the police". Duh. Anyways, I still wasn't convinced or trusting, so I walked back to where she was and we questioned him. "Are you really the police", "how do we know that for sure", "this could just be a cop car and you have his vest on", "where did you just come from", "so you just saw us walking and decided to stop", "why", etc. We got in the police car and asked about restaurants. I still had more questions though. So I asked his name. He answered, to what I thought he said "Innocent". SO I said, "wait you pick us up on the road and your name is Innocent"?! This must be a joke. Again, "Innocent" is what I "heard", but his name was Enocen. Duh. I don't usually experience language barriers during intercultural interactions, but this was an example likely because I was on-guard. It was dark, late, two female foreigners walking alone. It was definitely an ice-breaker as we all laughed. Yes, he was actually the police. I remembered that we had just passed the police station with a bunch of cops standing/talking outside, so it was fine. He was just assisting two visitors to his country.
I jokingly asked the officer if he would be picking us up to us back as well; if he would remember us. He replied that he may not remember me, but would remember my friend. That was interesting, so we probed for more information. She was going to ask if he had seen her on TV or something; is that the reason he would remember. I asked him why he would remember her. He said he seen her somewher, so I asked where he might have seen her because we looked at one another very puzzled. We were not expecting this answer, but he said becaue he saw her walking the streets LOL. SO I said, "Oh. Oooh, do you think she's a street-walker?!?" She said, "Oh my gosh, now I'm a street-walker!" Maybe she just had a familiar face to him or something, but it was hilarious!
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