Day Ten Some nuggets from the morning’s conversation revolving around how we might be more involved in social change where we live:
“There are ditches we slide into,” Andrew said, “like believing that if we do something, it has to happen for everyone. Instead, it might be better to ask: Where are the pockets where something can happen?”
Someone in our group mentioned that we gather strength from taking action together — we don’t have to do these hard things on our own — but I said that our need to do things as a group, to be in agreement with the people we relate to, can actually be a tripping stone. Many times, acts of resistance are done by individuals, not communities. And since countering power isn’t exactly a pleasurable activity, waiting for a whole group to take action together might be foolish, especially when our social circles often consist of the people with the power.
“The answers are not found in the voting booth,” Steve said. “It’s the day before election day and the day after that is our political act. We don’t need to keep giving our agency away. I want you to feel a bubbling of creativity inside your guts. The struggle is the struggle is the struggle, and it’s sacred. It’s fun. I’ve done my stints in jail, and it was fun.” He grinned. “We sang a lot.”
***
A few weeks back, when I announced on social media that I’d be traveling to South Africa, another cheesemaker who follows my YouTube channel, asked if we could meet up. He had some cheeses for me to sample, he said. When I rounded the corner and saw him standing there in the parking lot, it was like seeing an old friend.
We visited for well over an hour, and that conversation — making that connection with another cheesemaker, as well as the fact that he took the time to come see me — was one of the most special parts of the whole South Africa trip.
***
Remember how Iziko challenged us to see, judge, act? Well one thing I was seeing, or not seeing, rather, was that there were no white people doing manual labor. Everywhere we went, it was Black and brown people serving the food, mowing the yards, driving the buses, doing the street work.
Even at the convent, the nuns and office administrators were white while the people serving our food and vacuuming the halls and doing the gardening were Black.
***
We spent the afternoon debriefing up on Chapman’s Peak.
We were encouraged to write down events that stood out to us in the last couple weeks, as well as make note of the things we wanted to do when we returned to the States in order to link the two worlds and provide accountability for our future selves.
***
That evening we walked to a winery for supper.
Cape Town is loaded with vineyards and wineries. Weekend culture is climb a mountain, hit a beach, kick back at a winery.
I ordered* apps for our end of the table: breads, cheeses, and meats, as well as ostrich carpaccio, which is raw meat, thinly sliced, and absolutely delicious.
For dessert, I suggested our end of the table get one of everything and then share.
Usually, restaurant desserts are a little meh, but every single one of the desserts was out-of-this-world delicious. Example, I am not normally a custard person but the panna cotta with passion fruit sauce? To die for. And the cheesecake with lemon curd — be still my beating heart.
We were the only group in the dining room, and we were jolly-loud, but after a white family of four was seated at another table, someone pointed out that the older gentleman kept turning around in his chair and shooting daggers at us.
In South Africa, it was explained, Black people are considered boisterous and loud while white people are calm and quiet. (These stereotypes exists in the US, too, yes? Yes.) It didn’t matter that some of the white people in our group were louder than anybody in the restaurant, or that the topic at hand was a friendly theological debate, or that another white party had been seated in the same room and was whooping it up merrily. The fact that our group included some Black people meant that we were the problem. On his way out the door, the guy actually turned to our group, swore, and then snapped, “I hope you’re having a lovely evening,” before stomping out. So there you have it: a snapshot of apartheid’s afterlife in all its cheerful glory!
When we had entered the winery, I’d noticed some people were running along the paths, so on our walk home, I asked the guard at the vineyard entrance what time the gates opened in the morning and whether or not I might come run there. “Of course,” he said. “We open at five. Maybe I’ll join you!”
Day Nine From the very beginning of our time in South Africa, we were instructed not to go anywhere by ourselves, and to never, no matter what, go out at night.
“I’m on something like my 28th cell phone,” Steve off-handedly told us. “Getting robbed is a part of living in South Africa. If someone robs you, just give them what they want and then go on. If you resist, well,” he shrugged, “stabbings are pretty common.”
“But is it okay to go running?” I asked. “Like, in the morning? Alone?”
“Yeah, probably.”
His response was less than reassuring, but I was fed up with feeling trapped. So that morning I got up early, pushed the button to unlock the convent’s front door, and slipped outside. Even though I had no idea where I was going, I left my phone behind; I’d rather get lost than have it get stolen. I tucked my key into my sports bra and jogged out to the road.
Within the first couple minutes, the keys started to slip out of the bottom of my bra so I switched to holding them. While running, I considered the heft of those keys. The more I thought about them, the more they became a metaphor for all the things I had access to, for connections, for power, and for all the ways in which I was a gatekeeper.
I ran until it seemed like I’d been running for 20 minutes or so, and then turned back. The run was entirely uneventful; the trickiest part was remembering to look to the right when crossing the street (since they drive on the left side of the road).
photo credit: Seth Myers
That morning, we had another paradigm-shifting contextual Bible study, one of Jesus’ parables about the Kingdom of Heaven. Again, here’s a summary (and if you want to dig deep, pause for a sec and go read Matthew 22:1-14):
A king prepares a wedding banquet for his son and tells his servants to deliver the invitations.
No one shows up, so he sends more servants.
Still the people refuse to come.
He sends his servants out again, telling them to bring in people from the streets, so they do, and the people come.
But the king notices one guest isn’t wearing wedding clothes. “How did you get in here?” he asks.
The guest remains silent, so the king has him tied up and thrown out.
The parable is normally interpreted to mean that the Kingdom of God is for everyone — but that day a completely different interpretation popped into my head. In fact, it so caught me so off guard that I laughed out loud.
What if the king was just a king? What if the people knew that the king’s invitation was more a display of force than one of kindness? And what if, when they were finally forced to participate, the one guy’s refusal to wear the proper party attire was simply an act of civil disobedience?
“But how is that showing us what the kingdom of God is like?” someone asked.
“Perhaps ushering in the kingdom of God is not necessarily fun or happy,” I said. “Acts of resistance sometime end in death. It gets ugly.”
“Remember the context,” Steve said. “Jesus is telling this parable right before he heads into Jerusalem and gets killed. Things are heating up and Jesus is pulling out all the stops. His stories are getting more political and pointed.”
“Who else remained silent when questioned by a political ruler?” someone asked. Oh right, yeah, we all nodded: Jesus.
And then Steve broke down the four dominant movements in Jesus’s day. These four groups were all Jewish, he said, and they all responded to the oppression differently.
The Zealots practiced violent resistance.
The Essenians withdrew completely and went into a “holy huddle.”
The Herodians were collaborators. (Jesus’s ministry was financed by Herodians, women who worked in Herod’s palace and then diverted funds to Jesus like Jewish Robinhoods.)
The Pharisees were hard leftists who believed their liberation was dependent on right praxis.
“Which group are you in?” Steve asked. It was a fun question to ponder. I think I tend to lean to an Essenian-Pharisee combo, and when I consider my Mennonite church, I’d say we lean more towards the Pharisees.
Nkosi said he’d be tempted to go with the Zealots. “Because what happens when you no longer have a cheek to give?”
***
In the foyer of the Desmond and Leah Tutu Museum, there was an art installation of a laughing Desmond flying through the air from a swinging chandelier. Andrew said that Desmond had played peekaboo with all three of his children. In fact, it was kinda hard to have a conversation with Desmond when children were around because he preferred to play with them.
The museum was broken into a half dozen sections, each one explaining a different aspect of the Tutus’ life and work. I learned that Desmond had asked other governments to put sanctions on South Africa to force the South African government to end apartheid, a request that infuriated the South African government, of course, and that President Reagan vetoed but the US Senate overruled.
In the room dedicated to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, I overheard Nkosi and Pokie having a heated discussion. They were standing by a display titled The End of the Road in which Tutu was handing the TRC’s final report to Mandela.
“That photo is so revealing,” they said, “And it’s problematic. What does it mean that the church is handing over its work to the government? And the TRC wasn’t the end of the road — not even close. There are so many lingering problems and so much more work to do.”
A film about the TRC was playing on a loop at the other end of the room, but they refused to watch it. “I don’t want to be retraumatized,” Nkosi said. “They way they treated Winnie…,” Pokie shook her head.
“Maybe I shouldn’t watch it,” I said, explaining that I was worried that if the video’s story was skewed, then I might not have a good-enough grasp of South African history to be able to sort out the nuances.
No, no, watch it, they urged. Then we’ll talk.
When I rejoined them, they asked what I thought. I told them that the video made it seem like Winnie was guilty of torturing and killing people, and I thought it seemed strange that Tutu was practically begging her to apologize, because any religious leader ought to know better than to force an apology. “According to the Mandela movie I watched before this trip,” I said, “it seem like Mandela divorced Winnie because she’d gotten too radicalized, too violent. In the movie it was her fault that the marriage didn’t last.”
“Winnie challenged Mandela,” they said. “She understood the people. Mandela lost touch while he was in prison. Lots of people say he sold South Africa short.”
“Did you know,” Pokie said, “that even though Mandela remarried, it was still Winnie who took care of him when he was dying?”
“If they still loved each other, why did they divorce?”
“If Mandela was going to lead, he couldn’t be with Winnie,” said Pokie.
“Winnie had power and was dangerous for the government,” Nkosi said. “She got blamed for actions that she didn’t do — everyone knew there was no way she could’ve been present for them. She was a scapegoat.”
There was so much I didn’t understand about South African history, but I was beginning to get the gist: as with any story, if you think it’s simple, then dig deeper and it’ll get complicated real fast.
After the museum, we picked up sandwiches from a bagel shop (chicken on a soft pretzel bagel) and then walked to a park for a lunch and then conversation, some of which I filmed. And thank goodness I did, too, because the video captures so much of the tone and cadence of our time in South Africa — the questions, the challenges, the frustrations.
Before you watch, a few things to be aware of:
*I’ve edited the conversation, but I’ve also left in some of the pauses. From the beginning, Iziko told us they would move slowly, giving us time to absorb the information, and they provided that slowness in the daily schedule as well as the ways in which they guided our conversations. I think you can feel that in the way they talk.
*You will hear Pokie responding to Nkosi with a deep “huh” or “umh,” a vocalization indicating that what the person was saying had hit home. I loved this South African response because it feels much more present than our um-hm’s and yeah-yeah’s.
*Apologies for the background noise. Park workers were doing gardening and raking directly beside us.
The conversation over, Steve helped me call an Uber, and I split from the group and headed down to Longbeach Mall to meet another cheesemaker. I was so excited to see her, but traffic was heavy and when I got there five minutes late, she’d already gone home. I was crushed but I quickly recalibrated and called another Uber (with the help of a rug salesman because I was totally new to this ubering thing) and rode over to Muizenberg Beach.
I walked the beach for a bit, and then popped into a bakery for some tea and an almond croissant.
According to Google maps, it was a 10-minute walk to Blue Bird Garage where our group was meeting up for supper. The map’s walking instructions were confusing so I asked a young couple with a baby how to get there, and then, with the daylight fading fast, I set off at a brisk pace, all the while thinking of the warnings against walking alone.
As soon as I left the touristy beach and hit the main street, a woman dropped in step beside me. She was attending college and needed money for bus fare, she said. Would I give her some? No, sorry, I said, never once breaking stride. From the corner of my eye, I saw three men watching us from across the street, and then I noticed another man following behind us. I am very rarely scared, but for the duration of that walk, I was afraid. I kept moving, making a point not to give street signs more than a quick glance, and only when I turned the corner and spied people from our group, did I allow myself to relax.
Had I been viewed as a target, or was my fear just a byproduct of my overactive imagination? I’ll never know. The walk was entirely uneventful save for my intense gut response. It was a new feeling for me.
Inside the Garage, food vendors lined the perimeter walls, and long wooden tables filled the center. The crowd was thick and the noise deafening. A few of us found a small space at the end of a table, and then we took turns running off to buy food — beef ribs, burgers, samosas, sushi, milk tart, candied nuts — and then passing around our plates so everyone could sample.
my poke bowl
One guy bought a bottle of wine — they gave him the opened bottle and as many glasses as he needed — and then he got another.
We sat around talking and drinking until the stalls started to close, and then we grabbed an Uber and headed home.
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.
