Haai Society Life

11/14/11, 7:44 p.m.

                What an incredible three day weekend! As a 12-week volunteer I am allotted 2 days off, and since I haven’t taken any sick days yet in 8 weeks (at this point I’m in a small minority there) I figured I could afford to take today off to go shark cage diving. But I’m getting ahead of myself. It’s not like I don’t look forward to going to work—that will always be the most significant part of this trip for me. On Friday alone, when my CCS placement director and the South Africa program director visiting from New York came to poke into the daycare, they found me standing on a desk scrubbing years of sticky tack off the walls with paint thinner the teacher gave me. Who doesn’t want to be completely flammable for the sake of 4-year-olds? The most poignant moment of the day and possibly of my whole time at Home from Home was when our token 18-month-old Olwethu, who usually only babbles occasionally or says, “Lifa!” (his older brother in the 4-year-old class) squealed, “Taylor!” It really touched me to know that I’m important enough in his life, especially because he’s one of the orphans from the foster homes, and hopefully in the lives of the other kids at the daycare and the hospital.

                When the weekend arrives, though, I make sure they’re busy simply because there is so much to do in a large urban area that also has expansive natural beauty. On Saturday I got the chance to perform in the Casa Labia museum in the beautiful beachside town of Muizenberg. The cultural director of the renovated Victorian mansion of the Italian Count Labia is an old friend of a CCS volunteer, so she contacted me about doing one of their free afternoon concerts. I envisioned playing in a gallery where I’d be background music but I was placed in a ballroom where a lot of people were having lunch and certainly listening. It went well considering I was playing serious repertoire on a student Armstrong flute (which is like competing in the Indy 500 with a rickshaw) and I even made R30 in tips. After the performance and my complimentary lunch a waitress came up to me and told me a man from the birthday party in the dining room (where I popped in and played Happy Birthday) wanted my contact information for gigs with his band. I went in to tell him that I’m American and only here for 4 more weeks, much to his disappointment. I almost had my big South African break, though!

                                On Sunday, several of us had planned to take a day trip to Hermanus, which is famous for whale watching. Unfortunately, after I had woken up early and gotten prepared, I came downstairs to find out all the boat tours were cancelled that day because of rain. The dismay didn’t last long because we found ourselves baking a spice cake and making lunch with the kitchen staff, to whom I’ve gotten much closer lately. CCS has severe rules about relations with staff, so it’s unfortunate that I won’t be able to keep in contact with them after this is over. We found out that Bongi has a boyfriend, Leonard, and that they will actually be getting married soon, so our cake had lavender icing and jasmine flowers on it and I wrote “B [Heart] L” on it and did the piping. We didn’t go anywhere or do anything particularly South African, but surprisingly it was a really meaningful morning to me. Then in the afternoon we went museum-hopping. You wouldn’t expect a Jewish museum in South Africa to be of much interest or importance, but we ended up spending much more of our time there than the South African National Gallery. My favorite part was an exhibit going on right now on Zapiro, the alias of the political cartoonist Jonathan Shapiro. I don’t know why it never occurred to me to look into political cartoons during something as political turbulent as apartheid and its aftermath, but as he said himself, "At age four, I had nightmares about monsters. My mother made me draw them. It was a kind of exorcism. The monsters disappeared, but I didn't stop drawing. At 29, I was still drawing. There were other monsters to draw."

                This morning I woke up at the lovely hour of 4 o’clock in order to be ready for the van that would take us on our 2-hour ride to Gansbaai, where we would set off on a boat for shark cage diving at 7 a.m. Due to circumstances that were never really revealed to us, we were actually picked up at around 5:30 and didn’t get there until 8:00. Needless to say, we were more antsy about an already slightly nerve-wracking experience. They gave us breakfast and huge orange raincoats worthy of Captain Ahab and we set out on a 15-minute ride to the shark spot. It was actually disconcerting how close we were to shore in the grand scheme of the entire ocean. Great whites do swim to shallow waters here, and beaches like Muizenberg have shark spotters, a flag system, and an air horn. We hadn’t even donned our wetsuits yet before a 12-foot-long shark took interest in the tuna head on a string and the chum with which the crew were teasing it. The cage held up to 6 people, and I was in the second group. After you put on some weights and goggles, you slide in through an opening on top and climb like monkey bars over to an open “regulator,” which was our breathing apparatus attached to a communal air tank on the cage.  Apparently this was the only company that offered such a device and usually you have to hold your breath and come up for air. We were only submerged a couple of feet but it was really convenient to stay underwater as long as you liked. The water was warmer than I expected, but it was also my first time in a wetsuit. In related news, I discovered post-wetsuit-hood hair is a good look for me. But I digress again.

                It was a lot like fishing where you wait around for a long time and get bored looking through the murky water at the school of fish that’s interested in the tuna head, and suddenly WHAM. The crew shout, “Haai!” (Afrikaans for shark) and there’s a great white shark charging near the cage. They never rammed into the cage but we did get jostled around. As soon as I was sure its mouth was far enough away, I actually reached out and touched the tail of one through the bars! Before we got in, they warned us that when you recoil as a reflex when the sharks swim close the breathing tube sometimes becomes strained and a little compromised, but I never had that problem. My face was pressed up against the bars every time we had a sharky greeting, which happened about 4 times. After the third and final group had their chance, they asked if anyone wanted to go again. Much to my surprise, a middle-aged man and I were the only ones who jumped on the offer. For the first time on the hours-long trip I was getting seasick in the cage and the water actually felt cold, but I’m glad I did it because a shark came even closer. An underwater thumbs-up is even better with someone you’ve never met before but with whom you are possibly risking your life.

                On the way back, we saw some of the last of the southern right whales because they are moving on in their migration after being in this area for a couple of months. Earlier, I was kicking myself for not seeing the whales sooner on my trip and for the missed Hermanus trip, but we saw a 55-foot-long one wave to us and what looked like a mother and a calf frolic under the surface and even make use of their blowholes. Once we arrived back on land and received lunch, we watched the DVD they created with footage from the day. If there’s one overpriced tourist item I’d actually buy on this trip, it would be something like that, so I succumbed. Besides, one always needs evidence for true gloating rights for doing something like cage diving, right?

                With the Garden Route trip last weekend where I ventured all the way out to the Eastern Cape for ziplining over waterfalls, a primate sanctuary, a trunk-in-hand walk and feeding elephants at an elephant sanctuary, witnessing bungee jumping off the world’s highest bungee jumping bridge but valuing my life too much, waiting at a baboon family-induced roadblock, and doing a safari at a game reserve, I’d say I’ve been doing a good job of keeping myself occupied. I feel so fortunate to have these experiences at such a young age, and I know I’m going to have some pretty great bucket list items checked off by the time I get back. As for now, I’m eager to go back to work tomorrow and see Olwethu waddle over and chirp my name again. As magnificent as they are, I’m fairly certain that’s something great white sharks can’t do.