Our time spent in Cape Town was far different from the rest of our trip. It is a city on the water with many foreigners, plenty of busy restaurants, and popular tourist attractions. Don’t get me wrong it was absolutely gorgeous and is a place I hope to return to at some point in my life. The most popular attraction where we spent a lot of time, the beautiful Victoria and Alfred Waterfront is in between Robben Island and Table Mountain; two other popular places we visited. It has lots of great restaurants where we dined multiple times and even a doctor’s office that I had the great fortune of visiting.
Looking back on our time spent in Cape Town versus our time in Namibia, we experienced two very different cultures. One main difference I noticed was the availability and sophistication of health care. Starting off our trip I was having extreme pain in my chest which I assumed was heart burn and was just taking over the counter medicine for, but having intensified pain and knowing that we were about to be in the middle of no where in isolated areas for 2 and a half weeks, I decided I needed to go to the doctor before we left Cape Town. I went to see Dr. Bisset who had his office right there in the one of the complexes on the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront. He was a very nice man and completely knowledgeable of the medicines in the United States. Not once did I feel that he was incompetent or that his diagnosis was wrong. It turns out that because I did not take my initial Doxycycline pill that I was taking for malaria prevention with lots of water it had burned my esophagus and caused that intense burning pain. So he said that I had developed esophagitus and prescribed me with 3 medicines and said that I would be healed and back to eating normal food within a week and it turned out that everything he did worked and soon I was feeling better! Through this experience I learned that in Cape Town, because of the number of tourists and the demand for doctors with knowledge of Western medicines, good health care is readily available. In contrast, when we were in Sesriem where Dr. Davis got his kidney stones, it was much more difficult to get him medical care. He had to go on a plane and in a car just to arrive at the hospital in Windhoek. All of the native people of Namibia and of other rural African countries are not able to get the care of a doctor every time they need it and as Burger told us they use aspirin to cure everything instead of actual prescription medicine. Also, these native people do not have the financial means to cover medical bills. All in all, I have realized how fortunate we, as Americans, are to have sophisticated medical care available to us on a regular basis.
During our stay in Cape Town we also visited Robben Island. Before I left for Africa I saw the movie Invictus about the South African rugby team and Nelson Mandela inspiring and encouraging them to win. It made me become more aware of who Nelson Mandela really was and what he did for South Africa. In the movie the main character visits Nelson Mandela’s cell on Robben Island, the same place we went to on our tour. An ex-prisoner led our tour of the jail and told us his personal story of why he became a political prisoner on Robben Island. He had been arrested in 1976 when he was a student. One of the things that stuck with me the most after our visit was how recent all of the issues of apartheid are and how prisoners were held on Robben Island during my lifetime. I will never forget the sacrifices that so many people made for their freedom and a quote on all of the buses on the island is “The journey’s never long when freedom is the destination.”
That same day we went on a drive down to Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope. We rode a funicular up to a lighthouse at Cape Point, which is where the Agulhas Current of the Indian Ocean and the Benguela Current of the Atlantic Ocean meet. There is such a dramatic coastline along this area. Then we drove a short ways down to the Cape of Good Hope, which is the most South-Western point of the African continent although some people incorrectly believe that it is the absolute most Southern point of Africa. It was awe inspiring to be somewhere that I have heard of for many years in school- I couldn’t believe I was actually there. I had thoughts like this throughout the whole trip.
The next day we had a free day where we were able to explore Cape Town on our own. A group of 5 of us set out on the Red Bus Tour and adventured all throughout the city. We really got a feel for everything that Cape Town had to offer. We even had a chance to go to Camps Bay Beach and have a lazy afternoon hanging out with many South Africans. This is one of my favorite days from the whole trip because by being on our own and having to figure the city out by ourselves, we delved into the culture and leaned a lot. I thoroughly enjoyed our time in Cape Town and realize how many cultural contrasts there are in different parts of South Africa and Namibia.
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