By rbhargava
I’ve been in South Africa for almost a month now…which makes me worry that the next few months will go faster than this one. The good news I’ve been able to knock off all kinds of things from my bucket list so far, and this week was one of the best in that sense. I had several memorable moments, including a tough class with the 7 graders I teach at Lynedoch Primary School on Monday, a tour of Cape Town with a geographer on Wednesday, a visit to a nearby informal settlement (Enkanini) and hike at the nearby Jonkershoek Nature Reserve on Thursday, and a trip to Cape Town on Saturday in which I ran into a massive pro-Palestine protest, went to the famous District 6 Museum, and did the very popular Full Moon Lion’s Head hike in the evening. All were amazing experiences and I would be happy to speak at length about any of them, but I want to focus this week’s blog post on something different altogether – life at my residence hall Metanoia.
I talked about Metanoia a bit in my Week 2 post, but to revisit – Metanoia is the largest university residence with about 500 students. Of those 500 students, there are 9 non-degree seeking international students – 5 Americans, 3 Germans, and 1 Swede. What that means is we are few and far between, and get to experience South African university life like few others. There a few hundred international students here for the semester, but only the nine of us are living in a completely integrated dorm with South African students. The past few weeks have made me greatly appreciate my situation, as most of the other international students are living with one another in buildings specifically for international students, or living in private residences. Two weeks ago the residence had a week-long celebration with all kinds of events from a Game Night, to a Seniors Night, to a massive party in its Quad on Friday, and even a wine tasting on Saturday. This type of community within a dorm is something I never experienced at GW, and is something I best experienced this past Monday when the dorm held its elections for Primarius and onder-Primarius (essentially President and Vice President of the dorm).
The election began around 7pm on Monday, and all students were required to attend, so the cafeteria on the ground floor of the building was transformed into an auditorium as 500 students crowded the room. Each candidate was given 5 minutes to speak, followed by a 5 minutes question period. Many of the questions were quite controversial and direct, and most students were very invested in the election – for reasons I’ll begin to explain later. The elections ended up taking over 3 hours, and we were forced to stay the entire time. Elections for onder-Prim actually ended up spilling over into the next few days as a run-off was needed. The entire election process made Metanoia seem like a cross between a fraternity, a dorm, and student government – which it practically is.
To get a better sense of why there is such a strong sense of community here, let me tell you more about the structure of Metanoia. Although every room is a single, hallways are grouped into sections…which meet once a week and are named – my section is Enkidu’s Kloof while others are more excitingly named such as Norrisville and Helms Deep. Sections meet once a week and typically share communal bathrooms. Because there are no kitchens in the dorm, many students are forced to eat their meals in the dining hall on the ground fall (which is a complete mess, but that story is for another time). This means lots of residents see each other constantly in the cafeteria as meals are served only during a one hour period.
Stellenbosch is also currently in the middle of acapella season, and Metanoia has both guys and girls acapella groups. They both had concerts this week, and in the past few weeks both groups performed multiple times for the entire dorm in the dining hall. Every now and then, an announcement over the loudspeakers will let all residents know that the guys or girls group will be performing in 5 minutes…and everyone runs down to have a listen. It’s a great opportunity to meet students and enjoy all that university life here at Stellie has to offer. What I can say for sure is residential life here is much much richer than that at GW, and I can only wish that schools in the US could learn something from Stellenbosch.