Good Night and Good Luck
Well, it was certainly an eventful weekend. The trip up to this year’s Intervarsity dancing competition went pretty smoothly: we made good time, driving through the night and arriving at our designated accommodation at about 11am. The chilli vodka went down well, the back of the bus was raucous and out of control in the manner of a good party, and the only person who was upset by the experience managed to lean out a window in time. We had a slight mishap with a phone being “mislaid” while everyone was offloading the bus – a little disturbing as no-one else came onboard, but otherwise we recovered from our uncomfortable sleeping positions with walks down to the beach, a bit of lunch, showers, naps and whatever else seemed appropriate.
Boy, Port Elizabeth is a random city, though. When you step out of any building in Cape Town, you know that you are Somewhere. The looming presence of the mountain, the feel of the ever-changing winds, the faint whiff of kelp on the air… you are in a Real City. PE, in contrast, feels like an arbitrary concrete sprawl which happens to abut a stretch of coastline. The beach is overshadowed by massive dockyard cranes instead of floral mountains. The sidewalks – every one of them - are covered with broken glass. Getting drunk and smashing bottles seems to be the primary source of entertainment – but more on that later…
Anyway, we hopped into the bus that evening to head off to the pre-Intervarsity social, closely followed by the Stellenbosch bus – which was fortunately almost empty, as we broke down about 1km from our backpackers. We transferred from our bus to theirs and went on to the social while our drivers tried to resuscitate it. We arrived at the venue late but in one piece… and as we were disembarking Christina got a call to say that their flat had just been broken into. Four laptops, Kev’s desktop, Natalie’s passport and plane ticket home, all Christina’s jewellery. (Of course, people walking past Christina to get off the bus overheard her talking on the phone and assumed that the backpackers that we’d just left had been robbed – half an hour later I was still clearing up that misunderstanding).
The venue was cramped and oddly shaped, and the music was unremarkable, so when it wrapped up an hour early we deemed it no great loss and went off to the competition venue (in our now-repaired bus) to have a final formation dance run-through in the hall. Our collective sense of humour was not improved by the discovery of a crane in the middle of the dance floor hanging decorations, so we threw in the towel and went home to get a (relatively) early night before our 5:30am start the next day. 800m from our residence, the bus broke down again, so we pushed it off to the side of the road, fended off the suddenly appearing flock of street kids and walked the rest of the way home. All the excitement had been a little too much for one of our number, who went into a panic attack later that evening and began convulsing and hyperventilating – there are certainly advantages to having med students and trained nurses in the society…
But when we woke the next morning (long before the sun), we found the bus standing proudly outside, and it started perfectly. The competition was great, too – everyone danced splendidly, UCT won overall and Lauren and I took gold in both the Latin and Ballroom sections. Christina and Vaughan won their Latin section and accumulated a truckload more medals in the Open dances. The formation went pretty well, although the winner was Tuks with a disturbing contemporary dance piece performed by what looked like death-metal peacocks dancing to electronica – it was reasonably executed, but not at all within Ballroom and Latin. I am more concerned about the precedent than the decision. The same girl had two more panic attacks in a loud and excited hall and spent most of the day with the paramedics, but otherwise the competition went brilliantly.
Being rather tired and very footsore by the time we got back, most of the older members decided to pick up some pizza and mixers and head back for drinks at the accommodation, although some of the beginners went out to the bar nearby where the after-party had been planned. We encouraged them to be careful and walk in groups, and then unwound with a well-lubricated dissection of the event, discussing what we’d enjoyed and what we’d thought was poorly planned and executed, as UCT will be hosting the competition again next year. We were still talking at 2am when our Congolese friend Herve staggered in bleeding from the head and supported by Marco and Monique. They had been walking back home together when they were accosted by four black guys who had initially grabbed Monique’s arm, and then hit Herve over the head with a bottle and chased him down the street as he ran away. The other two were fine, and Herve was fast enough that he got away with a nasty blunt-instrument wound. And why did all this happen? Well, Herve and Marco were talking French, you see, and in South Africa any foreign black guys are still liable to be attacked on sight by xenophobic locals. Good times.
I chatted briefly to Joe about it online and he asked whether it was coincidence or things were getting worse. I replied that I wasn’t sure, but the fact is that it’s already unacceptably bad here, so whether it will deteriorate further is not important to my plans. In retrospect, of course, I don’t think it was unlucky or even statistically improbable. There were about 60 of us on the trip, so with one person getting assaulted, one phone stolen and two people having their houses broken into over the course of four days we get (approximately):
Assault: 1 in 90 per year
Phone theft: 1 in 90 per year
House break: 1 in 45 per year
…which I actually think is probably close to the real numbers. I’m kinda surprised that no-one else lost their phone as well and that no-one had their car stolen – both of those rates seem a little under-estimated, but then it is only a single sample…
In retrospect, the whole weekend seemed tailor-made, though. As our last Intervarsity, it was as good a farewell as we could have hope for – we both had a great time, danced fabulously and came home with a bunch of medals. And at the same time, it was a sharp and clear reality-check that it’s time to leave. Yes, it’s possible to survive here, but neither of us is interested in merely surviving – we’d much rather actually live...
Boy, Port Elizabeth is a random city, though. When you step out of any building in Cape Town, you know that you are Somewhere. The looming presence of the mountain, the feel of the ever-changing winds, the faint whiff of kelp on the air… you are in a Real City. PE, in contrast, feels like an arbitrary concrete sprawl which happens to abut a stretch of coastline. The beach is overshadowed by massive dockyard cranes instead of floral mountains. The sidewalks – every one of them - are covered with broken glass. Getting drunk and smashing bottles seems to be the primary source of entertainment – but more on that later…
Anyway, we hopped into the bus that evening to head off to the pre-Intervarsity social, closely followed by the Stellenbosch bus – which was fortunately almost empty, as we broke down about 1km from our backpackers. We transferred from our bus to theirs and went on to the social while our drivers tried to resuscitate it. We arrived at the venue late but in one piece… and as we were disembarking Christina got a call to say that their flat had just been broken into. Four laptops, Kev’s desktop, Natalie’s passport and plane ticket home, all Christina’s jewellery. (Of course, people walking past Christina to get off the bus overheard her talking on the phone and assumed that the backpackers that we’d just left had been robbed – half an hour later I was still clearing up that misunderstanding).
The venue was cramped and oddly shaped, and the music was unremarkable, so when it wrapped up an hour early we deemed it no great loss and went off to the competition venue (in our now-repaired bus) to have a final formation dance run-through in the hall. Our collective sense of humour was not improved by the discovery of a crane in the middle of the dance floor hanging decorations, so we threw in the towel and went home to get a (relatively) early night before our 5:30am start the next day. 800m from our residence, the bus broke down again, so we pushed it off to the side of the road, fended off the suddenly appearing flock of street kids and walked the rest of the way home. All the excitement had been a little too much for one of our number, who went into a panic attack later that evening and began convulsing and hyperventilating – there are certainly advantages to having med students and trained nurses in the society…
But when we woke the next morning (long before the sun), we found the bus standing proudly outside, and it started perfectly. The competition was great, too – everyone danced splendidly, UCT won overall and Lauren and I took gold in both the Latin and Ballroom sections. Christina and Vaughan won their Latin section and accumulated a truckload more medals in the Open dances. The formation went pretty well, although the winner was Tuks with a disturbing contemporary dance piece performed by what looked like death-metal peacocks dancing to electronica – it was reasonably executed, but not at all within Ballroom and Latin. I am more concerned about the precedent than the decision. The same girl had two more panic attacks in a loud and excited hall and spent most of the day with the paramedics, but otherwise the competition went brilliantly.
Being rather tired and very footsore by the time we got back, most of the older members decided to pick up some pizza and mixers and head back for drinks at the accommodation, although some of the beginners went out to the bar nearby where the after-party had been planned. We encouraged them to be careful and walk in groups, and then unwound with a well-lubricated dissection of the event, discussing what we’d enjoyed and what we’d thought was poorly planned and executed, as UCT will be hosting the competition again next year. We were still talking at 2am when our Congolese friend Herve staggered in bleeding from the head and supported by Marco and Monique. They had been walking back home together when they were accosted by four black guys who had initially grabbed Monique’s arm, and then hit Herve over the head with a bottle and chased him down the street as he ran away. The other two were fine, and Herve was fast enough that he got away with a nasty blunt-instrument wound. And why did all this happen? Well, Herve and Marco were talking French, you see, and in South Africa any foreign black guys are still liable to be attacked on sight by xenophobic locals. Good times.
I chatted briefly to Joe about it online and he asked whether it was coincidence or things were getting worse. I replied that I wasn’t sure, but the fact is that it’s already unacceptably bad here, so whether it will deteriorate further is not important to my plans. In retrospect, of course, I don’t think it was unlucky or even statistically improbable. There were about 60 of us on the trip, so with one person getting assaulted, one phone stolen and two people having their houses broken into over the course of four days we get (approximately):
Assault: 1 in 90 per year
Phone theft: 1 in 90 per year
House break: 1 in 45 per year
…which I actually think is probably close to the real numbers. I’m kinda surprised that no-one else lost their phone as well and that no-one had their car stolen – both of those rates seem a little under-estimated, but then it is only a single sample…
In retrospect, the whole weekend seemed tailor-made, though. As our last Intervarsity, it was as good a farewell as we could have hope for – we both had a great time, danced fabulously and came home with a bunch of medals. And at the same time, it was a sharp and clear reality-check that it’s time to leave. Yes, it’s possible to survive here, but neither of us is interested in merely surviving – we’d much rather actually live...
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