October 2 2010 / MV Explorer

I’ll keep this entry short because it was several days ago and I don’t even remember it too much—it was the day before Cape Town, so I was a little preoccupied. 

Global Studies today was taught by none other than the lovely Desmond Tutu, who is an incredible human being and I just adore hearing him talk.  One of the first things that he said was, “Someone asked me once how to get a Nobel Peace Prize, and I told him that there are three things you need—an easy name is first.  Secondly, a large nose, and three, you must have sexy legs.”  And then he cracked up.  ADORABLE.  He told us lots of parables to talk about apartheid and he gave us a little bit of history about it as well, though for a lot of it he just talked about some of his own experiences and mostly how people, black and white, were affected in their spirit.  It was a very powerful speech, and in the end, people were asking assortments of questions.  I kind of wanted to ask him what he could say to people who lacked the kind of faith that he has in God, but I felt too shy, so I didn’t ask (but I should have).  People asked about health care, how he kept his joy, and other things.  And the ending question was:

“What’s your favorite color?”

Desmond Tutu laughed and said, “You.  You are a good color.”

More awesome things I found in my notes that Desmond Tutu said:

“God has got no one except you.  God wants there to be peace in this world, for every child to have enough to eat, to have clean water, for education, but they are not going to come floating down from heaven.  God says, “Please help me, so those women being raped in the Congo will stop.  You, you, you, [pointing around] please help me.  I want a world where people live in peace.  They are all my children.  Help me make my world a compassionate world.  Help me make this world where they will spend more money on food and homes than on guns and bombs.  I have no one except you.””

“Don’t be affected with the cynicism of oldies like me.  Continue to be idealistic.”

“Dream the craziest dreams—they often are God’s dreams.”

“Just telling your story can be therapeutic.”

“It is not the faith that is the problem, it is the faith fool.”


That was absolutely awesome, but what WASN’T awesome was that night, when I got an email saying that the ferries that go to Robben Island were not working properly, so the “Robben Island Pilgrimage” I had signed up for would not be to Robben Island, but instead to a Holocaust Museum, District Six, and some other places.  Being as that I was already losing my mind not knowing how I was going to fit in everything I wanted to do in the three days I had in Cape Town, I stomped over to the field office immediately to demand a refund.  They were not there, which made me even more angry.  Change the itinerary the day before the trip, and not be there to provide refunds or even mention anything about refunds in the email?  I saw her at the pre-port and she said she would “do her best” to get me a refund.  Yeah, I’m pretty sure if you change the itinerary to something completely different I’m entitled to get a refund.  -.-  Mostly though, I was just disappointed that I wouldn’t be able to go, though I did try to look on the bright side of the entire day that I had ahead of me. 

Logistical pre-port was a little bit of scare tactics going on, which I guess makes sense because South Africa is the second most violent country in the entire world.  But don’t worry, we’re all taking good care of each other. 

That was really all the interesting parts of today.  SOUTH AFRICA IS AWESOME THOUGH.  AIEEEE.