Semester at Sea cruises through South Africa

(The author regrets to inform his readership that, in accordance with previously ignored… (The author regrets to inform his readership that, in accordance with previously ignored security concerns, he is no longer permitted to dispatch the specific location or course of the S.S. Universe Explorer.)

“You should see the cars that come out of there,” said Nur the cab driver, pointing out the window of his rickety, red van at the sprawling squatter camp, or township, lining the highway. “Audis. Land Rovers. Mercedes.”

Why would any of the residents of this township on the outskirts of Cape Town, South Africa, choose automotive luxury over escaping residential poverty? Because there’s still rent-free living to be found in squalor and indignity. Most of them are in their cars more than their houses anyway – for their daily commutes to and from work in the center of Cape Town.

More than 10 years have passed since the abolition of apartheid, the institutional racism that ruled the country since 1948. Power has changed hands, worldwide perceptions of South Africa have improved, and sanctions have been lifted. In many ways, a new South Africa is certainly emerging out of the wreckage of its troubled past.

But the flimsy shacks of the townships have withstood the winds of change, remaining as testaments to the country’s legacy of oppression – and to the challenges it faces in the future.

Much like the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, the shantytowns sprawl out for miles. The huts and shacks, constructed of found materials, are jammed together on unpaved, dusty ground. Streets, towns, and even communities, have emerged out the improvisation. Some of the townships have become models for social development, giving rise to schools, medical facilities, choirs and outreach programs for the youth.

Those are the ones they take the tourists to, Nur explains.

With the improvement of any country’s popular image comes, perhaps inevitably, a burgeoning tourist industry, and South Africa’s has thrived in the years following the fall of the apartheid regime. Township tours seem to be one of the most popular tourist activities here, offering visitors the opportunity to see third-world poverty firsthand and to purchase peace of mind. On a township tour, you can take pictures with residents, see the insides of their homes, eat local food and hand out gifts to children.

Then you can get back on an air-conditioned tour bus and commit the whole experience to memory: how you made a difference by giving a starving child a plastic toy, how you made a personal connection by taking a picture with somebody.

The whole idea seems tasteless, troubling and downright weird to me. Wouldn’t it make more sense for the government to invest time, money and energy to eliminate the townships, rather than allowing the tourist industry to flaunt the squalor of these communities and turn a profit on it?

The Waterfront is a Disneyland-esque, squeaky-clean assortment of shops, restaurants and malls surrounding the area where ships like our own S.S. Universe Explorer dock. The manufactured beauty of the place is a picture of safety, affluence and cosmopolitanism in which money-wielding tourists can buy Levi’s in air-conditioned comfort and eat food at places like “Maria’s Cantina.” Tourism companies man booths along the dock, offering skydiving, bungee jumping, hiking expeditions and township tours. Men in traditional Zulu regalia wear Converse All-Stars and dance for throngs of enthralled visitors. All these westernized amenities, coupled with the spectacular view of Table Mountain and the dry heat, reinforced an eerie feeling that I was in Montana, rather than Africa.

But then again, that’s what most South Africans will tell you about their country: that it is worlds away from the continent with which is shares a name.

When I find myself in a place like the Waterfront, I am reminded that, as I travel around the world, there are people in every country investing a lot of money so that I can enjoy myself, without incident, in their country. In turn, I will buy many things in their country and preach about its beauty and safety to my friends, who will also travel to that country. Tourism is an industry, and countries trying to cash in make a concerted effort to cater to the lowest common denominator of foreign adventurer.

He’s the one who prefers to shop at a mall rather than a street market and eat KFC rather than local cuisine – and, in turn, completely isolates himself from the beauty and vibrancy of the local culture. The hope is to provide you with a South African experience, but not so South African that you get freaked out and don’t want to come back. Thus the Zulus in Converses.

In the end, it comes down to the difference between tourist and traveler, and this time around in South Africa, I played the part of the former well. I did everything I was supposed to. I hiked, biked, tasted wine and spent plenty of money on food and handicrafts. I felt comfortable and safe the whole time, and, by all accounts, I should go home and tell all my friends that Cape Town is paradise. Which it is – if you’re only there for a visit.

But it would be difficult to ignore the pushiness I sensed in Cape Town, the over-eagerness to appease the tourist population and the feeling that the true culture was completely off-limits to me. It made me wish I had more time in Cape Town, so that I might better avert those discomforting advances.

When I ran into Nur on my last day in the city, I offered to take him out to lunch, as long as he would choose the restaurant. He drove us to a quiet corner of central Cape Town, far from the busy streets hounded by tourists and pushy local peddlers. There in Bo-Kaap, an old Muslim neighborhood, we ate traditional Malay food with our hands and talked about our lives. To my surprise, Nur is only 25, though he carries the responsibilities of a man much older with such grace and ease that I had pegged him at 30, at least. We exchanged phone numbers and e-mail addresses, and I saw genuine interest in his eyes as he asked when I would be returning to South Africa.

It was the first time in a while I felt like a traveler, not a tourist.

Jonathan Check is the foreign correspondent for The Pitt News. He drank plenty of absinthe in South Africa – and wasn’t impressed. He recommends the stars of the Southern Hemisphere instead. E-mail him at Jonnycman@hotmail.com.