Although I can pass as a local because of the color of my skin, my cover is blown as soon as my American accent comes out. Regardless, I have integrated into the community quite a bit, even though I am a foreigner.
It is so diverse in Cape Town! I come across many people from different cultural backgrounds and countries. This is because the Cape is a popular seaport, and borders countries like Namibia and Zimbabwe. I have made it a habit to chat with my taxi drivers, and I recently had a driver who was an English teacher from Saudi Arabia. Cape Town is a melting pot of cultures—Indian, Chinese, Dutch, Caribbean, New Zealand, Zimbabwean, you name it. The history dating back to the indigenous bushmen, to the arrival of the Dutch in the 1600s to the Indians settling down to secure the spice trade to now is so evident!
I have always been aware of race dynamics wherever I go in South Africa. As a person of color, I am affected daily by the ways that I am treated because of my race. This treatment is implicitly a function of the systematic inequalities that plague people of color such as segregation and housing access. Before traveling to South Africa, I knew a bit about the troubled history of apartheid in this country.
