I have fallen in love and I don't care who knows it. Cape Town is amazing! My days here have been packed full and each event has been worth while. We arrived on Wednesday, February 27 and although there was a bit of fog that delayed are docking (seems like that damn fog follows us everywhere) we were able to get off the ship by 10am. My first day was spent wandering around the V&A Waterfront and planning the rest of the week. My dad set me up with Anton, the son of a man he knows through business, who couldn't have been lovelier. He helped us plan the rest of our week and has been a wonderful asset hooking us up with guides and places to go. Following our meeting with Anton we head to the Slave Lodge, which is the oldest building in Cape Town. It has since been turned into a museum, however, in its day the building housed and sold all the slaves that were brought through the cape. After which we scurried back to the ship, changed for hiking and were off to Lion's Head for sunset. The hike is only about 40 minutes to an hour and we reached the top just in time to see the sun go down. Luckily we brought flashlights or else we would have never made it all the way to the bottom.
Day two we hooked up with Gavin from Xtreme Adventure who organized for us to go surfing! Being from the Midwest there isn't a huge opportunity to learn to surf so I was pretty amazed when I got up on my second wave. Of course the waves were not very large and we were learning on an 8 foot foam board but still I'm pretty pumped about it and could have continued all day. The rest of our day consisted of driving around the beautiful Cape Peninsula where we visited Cape Point, a nature reserve, ostrich farm, and saw the penguins at Boulder Beach. A few things to remember when dealing with wild animals... never get too close. Apparently ostriches will eat anything and everything, in fact one lunged at my camera as I tried to take its picture.
My third day was spent wandering through the townships with a local guide, Thabang. For those unfamiliar, the townships in Cape Town were established during Apartheid as undeveloped areas designated as "non-white" communities. Today the neighborhoods of Cape Town are still divided predominantly based on color but more specifically on social class. There is of course the white areas then in the townships are the colored and black. Being from the US the term "colored" has been one I have had to get used to, however, here it refers to people of mix origins or those who are not black and not white. During segregation, if a white person were to married a non-white they would be "demoted" to colored status.
Our visit began in Khayelistsha at a pre-school and kindergarten and a co-op started by the neighborhood. The children were beautiful and so excited to see us. They sang us songs, posed for pictures and played games with us. I am convinced that no matter what you do you will generally reflect that attitude of the children you meet. After relishing in the grinning faces of children ages 4 to 7 we walked across the street to a co-op where local goods and art projects were on display. Khayelistsha is one of the black townships and one of the better off of the tin-housed neighborhoods. We later visited Vikki's B&B, which boasts to be the smallest hotel in South Africa. Here we met the owner and manager Vikki. She has turned her home into a two bedroom bed and breakfast that brings tourists into the neighborhood. She has had visitors from all over the world each contributing to the area in their own way. Anyone is welcome to come stay with Vikki as she encourages foreigners to live daily life in the townships. She explained to us that in the beginning her neighbors did not understand what she was trying to accomplish and were angry that she wanted to bring "outsiders" into their lives. However, after speaking with her I have understood that because of these travelers the community has been able to finance a number of small businesses, a preschool, and a skills school that teaches things such as sewing to the girls in the neighborhood so they might have a marketable trade in order to get a job.
Following Khayelistsha we visited Langa, the oldest and most populated of the townships. Here we met with locals and visited a local medicine man. His dark, musty garage of a storefront housed plants, dried fruits and vegetables, roots, animals and lord knows what else. A man standing only a few inches taller than myself wearing the pelt of some animal on his head the a belt of wood and bones to ward off illness enlightened us on the many ways to cure aliments ranging from a headache to making someone fall in love with you.
After the township visit, as I walked through the renowned District Six Museum, I realized how peaceful the entire day had been. Not that I expected violence by any means however, my guide and the museum didn't touch on it at all. The displacement of the non-whites during the late 1950s and early 60s was not exactly peaceful nor was the way in which the government kept order during the Apartheid movement. However, when asking Thabang he said that Nelson Mandela taught them to forgive and move on from the hatred. Although I believe that to be their hope, to one day evolve past the pain of Apartheid, it is not yet a reality. But there is certainly reason for hope.
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