Day Eight
In the Bo-kaap, a Muslim community in the heart of Cape Town, we learned that this neighborhood had been the only area in the city center that was never named a “white-only” area during apartheid.
photo credit: Andrew Suderman
At one point, the city government wanted to build a bridge to racially divide the neighborhood (so much for bridges being used as tools of connection), but because officials hesitated to destroy religious buildings and the Bo-kaap sported ten mosques, they never did it.
photo credit: Seth Myers
There were Palestinian flags everywhere we looked, as well as lots of pro-Gaza graffiti. We’d seen this same messaging in Jo’burg, too. South Africans, we learned, are deeply attuned to the Palestinian situation. In fact, just a week or so before we’d arrived in the country, Steve had helped organize a march in Cape Town to protest the genocide and nearly 90,000 people showed up.
“If the olive trees knew the hands that planted them, their oil would become tears.”
photo credit: Isaac Witmer
It makes sense that South Africans would be so proactive with what’s happening in Palestine: once a person’s lived under an apartheid government, it’s all too easy to identify one when you see it. (And for anyone needing a refresher on apartheid, here’s a simple rule: when there is one set of laws for one group of people and a second set of separate and unequal laws for another group of people, that’s apartheid. We had it in the States with slavery and Jim Crow; they had it in South Africa; and it’s ongoing in Israel-Palestine.)
These days, the people in the Bo-kaap are called “Cape Malay,” a term which is also used to describe their particular food. And lucky us, we got to eat some of that food!
photo credit: Andrew Suderman
Our tour guides greeted us with warm koesisters, homemade doughnuts spiced with cardamom, cinnamon, and anise and then rolled in coconut.
And then after the tour, we went to the home of a Palestinian family for a homemade lunch. Fatima was frying up the bread when we arrived.
photo credit: Keaton Shenk
Best I could tell, it was like a cross between na’an and roti. When it was hot off the griddle, she had me scrunch it up like a piece of paper, never mind the buttery shards shooting all over her kitchen, before rolling it up and then cutting each roll in half.
And then we all sat down at tables stretching the length of their house for a feast of curry, fried chickpea flour and veggie balls, samosas, chutney, rooibos tea, and more koesisters.
And then it was time for Table Mountain! Some of us had decided to hike up while the rest of the group was going to take the cable car. I was excited — and nervous. Driving around Cape Town the last couple days, I kept eyeing that mountain, wondering if I was nuts for wanting to climb it. I don’t do heights, and from the city floor, it looked like a sheer cliff shooting up.
photo credit: Andrew Suderman
But I watched a bunch of videos, read some stuff, talked to people, and finally decided, Oh, get over yourself, Jennifer. You can TOTALLY do this. Because it’s all about the mindset, right?
But then we arrived at the entrance and — noooooo! — it was closed! There’d been some sort of fire situation that impacted the cable car, and they’d shut the whole place down. (Over the next couple days, a few of us kept checking back to see if it was open, but nope. And then we learned that it would probably be shut down for several weeks. We could’ve hiked up and back — there was no requirement to take the cable car back down — but our schedule didn’t have wiggle room for a hike that long, so I guess my life will not include a hike up Table Mountain, sob.)
Instead of Table Mountain, the group decided to go to Boulder Beach to see the penguins. Enroute, we took Chapman’s Peak Road. On one side, cliffs rose up so steep that huge nets were strung along them to keep the rocks from crashing down on the cars, and on the other side, the ocean was all a-dazzle. We stopped at a lookout point along the way.
I tried to chill the heck out — it was beautiful — but I was about fed up with all the seeing and looking and photographing. I wanted to do something, and now [foot stomp].
At the beach, a boardwalk led us right through the penguins’ nesting quarters.
Penguins were everywhere (it was mating season), and they were kinda cute, but also just like chickens — stinky and spastic.
the mood I was in, they should’ve put a fence around ME
We got ice cream — I ordered caramel toffee nut, which was nice — and when we reached the end of the walk, I tried to entertain myself by window shopping the street vendor stalls, but my heart wasn’t in it. Here I was in Cape Town freaking South Africa, and I hadn’t even touched ocean water yet.
The last eight days of sitting, museum touring, eating, talking, and driving everywhere was beginning to take its toll on me. Except for when we were interacting with paid guides in museums or the occasional street vendor, our group had been held apart, sequestered in our retreat centers and convents, observing almost everything from behind the windows of our bus. It’d been fine — it’s what I expected — but now that I wasn’t climbing Table Mountain, I realized just how desperate I was to do something.
not hiking Table Mountain
photo credit: Betty Shenk
And then I looked down towards the water and realized there were no fences between it and me! Seconds later, I was shucking my shoes, scootching my running shorts up even higher, and wading into the cold water. (I wanted to strip down to my undies and jump in, but I had no towel and didn’t want to soak the rental van seats.)
Seth joined me then, and we scrambled over the penguin poop-covered boulders. I watched as a seagull repeatedly picked up some sort of crustacean in its claws, flew up in the air, and then dropped its dinner on the rocks below to crack its shell.
Finally, finally, finally, my feet were in South African waters.
It was glorious.
That evening, two other couples and I split from the group and met up with a South African couple who had attended our church twenty-some odd years ago. (They’d sailed to the states with their five children on their own boat, can you even imagine?)
We spent the evening outdoors under heat lamps, candles flickering, catching up over our pizza and wine.
It was lovely to see them, and so refreshing to be out and about, semi on my own. I needed that.
This same time, years previous: the quotidian (11.21.16), how to use up Thanksgiving leftovers in 10 easy steps, a big day at church, ushering in the fun, smashing for pretty, chocolate pots de crème.
