This is Africa.

“The three most important letters, that you must constantly remind yourself throughout your semester here in Cape Town, are T.I.A. – This is Africa.” My abroad experience in South Africa began with these first words. As the 45 of us in my program piled in to our orientation meeting around an hour late (perfectly on time in Africa), the director explained that we had now entered some sort of alternate reality – that for better or worse, we weren’t in Kansas anymore. South Africa, and Cape Town in particular, is a Third World community with some benefits of the first world. It is usually incredibly frustrating for American students to understand the inherent pace change – where the word “now” no longer has any immediate connotations. I have been programmed to expect a fast world where I can communicate, access information or even just do simple errands any time I wanted. But no longer. “If something is broken, if something takes hours longer than it should, if you can’t find what you are looking for in a store – just remember – this is normal here, this is Africa.” And after almost 5 days here, I have seen that this expression has been all-too useful. When they handed us four different old-fashioned keys that separate us from our homes, a chorus of T.I.A’s filled the room. When setting up a bank account took, literally, all day, our orientation leaders reminded us - T.I.A. When the director of international students explained the course registration process at University of Cape Town, and we all discovered it was done, without computers, on paper – we sighed a T.I.A. And only in Africa would 9 of us pile in to an 8-person cab filled with other people (and remarkably only pay 70 cents to cross town). But while my adventure in Africa is just beginning, and I’m coming to terms with the differences and the frustrations of living in a completely different world, I also have started to understand the things that make this city so special. Nowhere else in the world could I look up and see stunningly beautiful Table Mountain next to an unrivaled waterfront. Nowhere else can I spend four American dollars on a good bottle of wine from a vineyard close to an hour away. And less than a week since the World Cup ended, with the sense of national pride understandably high, the Shakira and K’naan theme songs play at least twice at every club to screams and cheers from all the patrons. Even with a crazy nightlife, the culture here is just inherently slower. People don’t wake up at 7 am to get to the office, the University library remains closed on Sundays, and unlimited wireless Internet does not exist. While all these things will take getting used to, perhaps it is best for me to just take a deep breath, slow down, become acclimated to this type of life style and remember T.I.A.