2008 Woodie Awards
Confronting stereotypes on late night walks
By: Seth Schlotterbeck
Issue date: 3/10/06 Section: Opinion
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I recently wrote about my daily walk through Rondebosch, the South African town in which I resided while studying abroad last spring. Walking that same route at night was a whole different story. While I lived in Cape Town, I worked for a short while in a little coffee shop called The Coffee Bean. It was located on the second floor of a small shopping mall about a mile from my house. The Bean officially closed at midnight most nights, but on busy nights it wasnâ?TMt until one or two before we cleaned up and headed home.
Those late night walks home had a much different tenor than the same route in the mornings and afternoons. While my daytime walks were full of sights, sounds, and people, the nighttime was filled with a silence that lent itself to contemplation and a hyperawareness of my surroundings. The lone security guard nodded his greeting from the lonely entrance of the deserted mall, and the disreputable bar across the streetâ?"The Pig and Swizzleâ?"alight with its slightly dodgy glow. My friends who lived on the streets had gone to their night spots or to a shelter if they had managed to collect the 15 Rand needed to spend the night, leaving vacancies on the street where I would normally see familiar faces. I would turn down the road and walk briskly along the sidewalk with my hands at my side. I always made sure to wear my running shoes on those late nights, just in case things took a turn for the worse.
Walking home on these nights and being forced to confront my own position in the neighborhood I now lived in was quite a trip. Unable to sequester myself in my bedroom or the library and wrench myself out of my rooted situation into the comforting safety of theories and case studies, questions and thoughts and half-formed answers flowed through my head like a babbling creek after spring melt. To call the section of Cape Town where I lived dangerous would be a little silly, but walking anywhere late at night by oneself was not a good idea.
In a place with such economic disparity, crime felt like a necessary method of justice, especially contemplating it from the perspective of an American student studying at a prestigious university, with a house, money, food, and a future. As a white person, I felt like a target, my pale face shining under the streetlights, my blue backpack marking me as a student.
Those late night walks home had a much different tenor than the same route in the mornings and afternoons. While my daytime walks were full of sights, sounds, and people, the nighttime was filled with a silence that lent itself to contemplation and a hyperawareness of my surroundings. The lone security guard nodded his greeting from the lonely entrance of the deserted mall, and the disreputable bar across the streetâ?"The Pig and Swizzleâ?"alight with its slightly dodgy glow. My friends who lived on the streets had gone to their night spots or to a shelter if they had managed to collect the 15 Rand needed to spend the night, leaving vacancies on the street where I would normally see familiar faces. I would turn down the road and walk briskly along the sidewalk with my hands at my side. I always made sure to wear my running shoes on those late nights, just in case things took a turn for the worse.
Walking home on these nights and being forced to confront my own position in the neighborhood I now lived in was quite a trip. Unable to sequester myself in my bedroom or the library and wrench myself out of my rooted situation into the comforting safety of theories and case studies, questions and thoughts and half-formed answers flowed through my head like a babbling creek after spring melt. To call the section of Cape Town where I lived dangerous would be a little silly, but walking anywhere late at night by oneself was not a good idea.
In a place with such economic disparity, crime felt like a necessary method of justice, especially contemplating it from the perspective of an American student studying at a prestigious university, with a house, money, food, and a future. As a white person, I felt like a target, my pale face shining under the streetlights, my blue backpack marking me as a student.
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