Lessons before I leave Grahamstown

I'm leaving town. Yes, I've finally reached the end of my degree in biology. Let me qualify that, I've studied in nine out of fifteen departments in the science faculty, and two subjects out-of-faculty, with varying degrees of success. I find myself being pushed out of this cosy, safe nest into the big, bad world, and I feel (among other emotions) sad to be going. It's been a good home, and has provided endless entertainment.
There's something about a small town full of students that lends itself to ridiculous happenings. From overheard snippets of strange conversations to full-blown streak-athons, this town has it all. I wrote a while ago about law students making drink-related traffic mistakes; I will now dispense some advice garnered from students from other faculties over the course of my university career.

BIOLOGY

Lesson 1: what to do if you find a dead shark on the beach
A group of students went down to the beach for the day. While surfing/walking along the beach, they came across a shark that had been washed up. The shark lying dead on the beach inspired in them the human urge to take care of the remains. So, no problem, they put the shark (which, it must be noted, was smelling quite ripe by this point) in the back of the car and brought it back to Grahamstown. Wondering where they were going to put it, they took it to the student cafe , pushed two tables togather, and displayed it proudly on its improvised plinth (pictured left). The confusion in the cafe courtyard the next day was amusing to watch, and was only resolved when the lab techs came and removed the little fishy. So, to recap, if you want to achieve maximum impact, place your dead shark in a high-traffic area.

Lesson 2: what to do if you come across road kill
On a road trip back from the beach, a group of guys came across a kudu lying dead in the road. Not wanting its death to be in vain, they took it back to their residence hall and put it in the bath-tub. Bear in mind that it was dripping blood as they carried it from the car, through the building, and to the bathrooms. Given that the facilities had started to look like a set from a particularly violent movie, they were told to remove the kudu. What did they do? They took it to their friend's house; a friend whose housemates were militant vegans. He then proceeded to carve the kudu into steaks in their bath-tub (more horror movie set design accompanied this action). Lesson: to annoy residence hall authorities and vegans, road-kill is an acceptable strategy.

PUBLIC DEBATE

Lesson 1: how to offend Christians
When drug legalisation comes up, there are always a mixture of reactions. There are the strongly against (usually represented by the religious people in the circle), those who are strongly in favour (usually represented by people who smell like combusted herbs and address everyone as "dude"), and those who have no reason to care so don't (incidentally, this group is a distinct minority in Grahamstown). The debate raged for a short while before someone announced, "On the third day, God made mushrooms; on the sixth day, God created the duck-billed platypus. You make the connection."

LIFE ACHIEVEMENTS

Lesson 1: dress for success
Nobody is going to pay attention if you dress in a nondescript manner. This is demonstrated time and again by students, who have a habit of wearing pyjamas to lectures, but insane costumes to fancy dress parties. We have a tradition of Boere [farmers] and Hoere [whores] Braais (well, had, until The Feminist Powers That Be raised objections to the word "hoere" on a poster) - basically the girls dress as farmers and the boys dress as ladies of the evening. On one of these evenings, a friend of mine took the lady of his dreams (or at least, the one he had been chasing for a few months) home after the party...while he was dressed as a prostitute.

Lesson 2: love yourself, screw what other people think
I was walking home from the labs the other night and walked past a clown in full facepaint. If that wasn't unusual enough, he was riding a unicycle. Admire the mad skills: he had a box of wine in each hand as he rode along. If I hadn't been more sober than a judge, I would've thought I was hallucinating. Now, I disapprove of drinking wine by the box, but you have to admire someone who is 1) secure enough to use his unicycle as a mode of transport between parties and 2) skilled enough to carry his party supplies while riding a unicycle.

Yes, I'm going to miss this crazy little town!

Lessons from drunk law students

This town seems to ge going crazy. In the last week, there have been three drink driving accidents. Now, I know that drink driving accidents are serious things, but, sometimes, you can't help yourself but laugh at the stupidity of some people. Bear in mind as you read this that, according to the South African constitution, you may not practice law if you have a criminal record.

Lesson 1: Don't catch lifts with strangers.
Two boys walked out of a bar; one of them was holding a beer in his hand. As they walk down the street, the boy holding the beer takes a swig. He knows (because he's a law student, and they learn these things) that drinking in public is illegal in South Africa (yes, it's ridiculous, but so are many of the laws in this country). However, he goes ahead and takes a good gulp, not realising that he's standing less than two metres away from a policeman. The cop promptly throws him in the back of the van. His friend, who was rather drunk at the time, yells "wait for me!" and hops in the back of the squad car, thinking he was getting a lift home. He subsequently spent the night in jail, and wasted the four and a half years that he had spent studying law.

Lesson 2: Watch where you're going
This story is less amusing. Actually, it's horrifying, but I'll get on with it. A guy, who is eight months away from qualifying as a lawyer, decided to drive drunk. Not tipsy, mind, he was properly drunk; slurring-and-struggling-to-stand-up-straight drunk. Anyway, he was obviously in a hurry to get somewhere, did a handbrake turn around a corner and accelerated out of it, ploughing down two people who were crossing the road outside a bar (the Rat, for those of you familiar with Grahamstonian geography). The girl got away with just a broken leg. Yes, I know a broken leg is serious, but wait. The guy who he ran into broke both legs, a number of ribs, and fractured his skull. The driver then proceeded to try and run away from the car, only to be stopped by the other (rather tipsy) students who were milling around. Yes, justice was served: he was arrested and is still in jail awaiting trial.

Lesson 3: If there is a stop sign at an intersection, stop
For those of you who have never been to Grahamstown, it is a town full of stop-streets and speed bumps...and on with the story. An eighteen year-old guy (yes, driving drunk) decides to jump a stop street. We've all done it, let's be honest. If it's the middle of the night and you're in a country where hijacking is common, you get into the habit of giving way rather than actually stopping at stop streets. What he didn't realise was that there was a police van parked five metres away from the intersection, which pulled into the street behind him and turned on its sirens. Instead of stopping and apologising, the kid decided to run. And run he did - up onto campus, through three stop streets, over seven speed humps, all the way up The Hill (upon which all the residence halls at Rhodes University are built) towards his house. In the process, he drove the wrong way up a one-way street and bumped into three cars. He then tried to park, crashing into the two cars on either side of the parking spot that he was aiming for. When he got out the car, the police duly tried to arrest him. He responded by trying to bribe them. Unfortunately, the cops he was facing weren't the kind that take bribes from stupid trust-fund brats.

Lesson 4: Don't give lifts to more people than you have seat-belts for
There is a filling station in Grahamstown that is home to the only 24-hour store in the town. It's called BP, and people tend to end up there in search of pies and/or samoosas and/or chocolate and/or drinking yoghurt at odd hours of the night (usually after last rounds at a bar). Our story begins when a guy (one year away from getting his law degree), driving a small, two-seater open-back truck, gave two of his friends a lift. His girlfriend was sitting in the passenger seat, so he told his friends to hop in the back and hang on tight. As they pull out of the filling station, a police van flashes its lights at him. Instead of stopping and talking his way out of it (which you can do for minor things like overloading, since it happens all over South Africa), he decided to try and out-run them. So, off he speeds, with his two friends in the back, trying desperately to hold on and not get thrown out of the vehicle. The driver decided to take all the back roads, turning at every intersection in an attempt to lose the cop car (I can only imagine how close his friends were to peeing themselves in terror). Eventually, he decided to try and cut across a school sports field. Unfortunately, he didn't see the lamp post in his way, and it brought his vehicle to a rather abrupt stop. His friends jumped out of the back and lay on the ground with their hands above their heads in the hopes that the police wouldn't arrest them. They, fortunately, evaded getting rewarded with a criminal record. The driver, on the other hand, wasn't so lucky.

We can conclude a number of things from this. 1) Driving under the influence is, perhaps, not as safe as one thinks it is at the time. 2) Grahamstown, despite being full of academic institutions, is full of very stupid people. 3) It's possible that male law students have a problem with authority.