African Diversity - Cape Town

The minute you step off the plane in Cape Town, this is what inevitably runs through your mind: "Are we in Africa?" Easily mistakable for an American or European seaside community, Cape Town's infrastructure boasts ease of travel, drinkable water, clean streets and sidewalks, and tourist areas galore. In stark contrast to Lagos' tropical terrain and climate (i.e. my quintessential "Africa"), Cape Town is dry, cool, and features a grandiose and picturesque coastline. In many (in fact most) ways it reminds me of the Bay Area in California. Wineries are plentiful, the summers can still be cool, and there is a general easygoing-ness that accompanies most tasks.

Though most speak English, Afrikaans is king. Streets and businesses claim names from this Dutch-based language whose vowel sounds have no relevance to their English counterparts. Springbok, wildebeest, ostrich, cheetah, and other game certainly reside nearby; but the only signs we saw of them were on menus, near farms from which they had escaped, or caged for tourists to pet. Still no signs of my quintessential "Africa." Ivory and zebra skin were aplenty in the local souvenir shops, though most were raised in mass for "legal" poaching. And our authentic South African cuisine at Moyo's was served to us by waiters from Zimbabwe.

In Cape Town we found the US of the Southern Hemisphere; modern comforts, big-city feel, and surface-level prosperity in the tourist parts of town...a definite contrast (and break) from the laborious Lagosian living.