Grab a cup of coffee and settle in...
What do penguins, ostridges and baboons have in common? Besides all being supremely amusing animals, they all live in the Cape, of course. And that is your geography lesson (or is it biology?) for the day.
My dad arrived last week, and since then we’ve borrowed a car from my cousin and I have been driving us all around the Cape. For those of you who are not suitably impressed, I should add that they do not drive on the right side of the road here. There’s been some learning to do – I have to remember not to wash the windows every time I turn left, but I think I’m doing fairly well, having only once swung out into oncoming traffic (kidding, mum, there was no traffic, just a big empty lane that should not have had me in it either…ooops). We went to see the penguins yesterday
(I call this one “Penguin Bouncer”)
and today visited an ostridge farm (ick to the farm bit, hi-larious as far as the birds go…)
and saw baboons
(they hang out at the side of the road scratching their red bums and banging cars for food – charming, really).
On Monday, we went to Robbin Island, which was as odd as these things often are. You file on to a boat with about a hundred other tourists (literally) and ride over to one of the most infamous prisons in the world. There you are greeted by ex-prisoners who have made the choice (both heroic and baffling, I think) to return and tell the world about their experiences. They take you on a bus to show you where the leper colony was in the 19th century and where Robert Sobukwe (one of the more famous apartheid-era detainees) was held in solitary confinement for 6 years (see links on your right for bio). Then you get to “go to prison”, and see Nelson Mandela’s cell. It is a surreal thing. Obviously an amazing thing to be able to go somewhere like that and hear from people who experienced – and survived – such horror in the name of freedom. But so so strange to go there as a tourist, our cameras snapping and our questions awkward. In the prison, our guide was a large black man whose eyes were crooked behind his thick glasses. He brought us in to one of the communal cells, where eight to twelve men would be held together and the walls bugged, and where he had at one time been incarcerated for his political beliefs. As we sat there, he told us about the political prisoner who had his eye pulled from its socket by one of the other inmates and about the beatings another man received for refusing to call the white warden “bass” (boss in Afrikaans). Part way through his narrative, one of the people on the tour raised his hand and said politely, “excuse me, sir, but we have to be back at our boat in five minutes”. Then we all filed out, down the hill and back to the mainland. You can see, I think, what I mean by surreal.
Nelson Mandela's cell
I continue to try to make sense of this place. I am listening to family stories, each one with its narrator’s particular point-of-view. One thing for sure about this family is that they can tell a story. I’m not certain, but I think I can hear my own in there somewhere.
I have probably said this before, but I continue to be amazed by how insulated people’s lives are here. They are so confined. Safety and security are mentioned literally in every conversation – someone has been the target of theft, someone else is having a new fence put in, a neighbour chased someone off her property last week. There are bars and locks on every single door, window and possible opening – even sometimes between rooms inside the house. When you are crossing the road, people remind you to wait on the sidewalk, because “they slow down and grab whatever they can”. If you want to go for a walk or run, you must stay within the eight square blocks of the neighbourhood (Rylands was a designated Indian Area under the Group Areas Act and is still populated primarily by Indian families who know each other at least in passing). Cars are equipped with an automatic feature, so as soon as you close the door, you are locked in. You do not go out after dark alone at all. It is not that I don’t believe the threat – I’m just not sure that the cure’s not worse. I do know I could not live like this for long. Everyone says it has become much more of a concern over the last ten years (everything is measured by these ten years since the new government was sworn in). I suppose it is because there is more freedom of movement, more expectation, more possibility and perhaps a new kind of frustration at continued inequalities. And of course, everything I am told is filtered through family and through, to some extent, the Indian community, which has, of course, its own politics to protect.
To end, I have found some great new music from the Cape. I am bringing back a few cds, but if you’re interested in the meantime, check out these links (also to your right):
http://cd.co.za/legends/2000plus/moment_cape_town.html
http://www.sheer.co.za/paul.html
http://www.sheer.co.za/index.html
Love to you all (especially for making it this far, if you’re still reading this crazy long message),
s.
My dad arrived last week, and since then we’ve borrowed a car from my cousin and I have been driving us all around the Cape. For those of you who are not suitably impressed, I should add that they do not drive on the right side of the road here. There’s been some learning to do – I have to remember not to wash the windows every time I turn left, but I think I’m doing fairly well, having only once swung out into oncoming traffic (kidding, mum, there was no traffic, just a big empty lane that should not have had me in it either…ooops). We went to see the penguins yesterday
(I call this one “Penguin Bouncer”)
and today visited an ostridge farm (ick to the farm bit, hi-larious as far as the birds go…)
and saw baboons
(they hang out at the side of the road scratching their red bums and banging cars for food – charming, really).
On Monday, we went to Robbin Island, which was as odd as these things often are. You file on to a boat with about a hundred other tourists (literally) and ride over to one of the most infamous prisons in the world. There you are greeted by ex-prisoners who have made the choice (both heroic and baffling, I think) to return and tell the world about their experiences. They take you on a bus to show you where the leper colony was in the 19th century and where Robert Sobukwe (one of the more famous apartheid-era detainees) was held in solitary confinement for 6 years (see links on your right for bio). Then you get to “go to prison”, and see Nelson Mandela’s cell. It is a surreal thing. Obviously an amazing thing to be able to go somewhere like that and hear from people who experienced – and survived – such horror in the name of freedom. But so so strange to go there as a tourist, our cameras snapping and our questions awkward. In the prison, our guide was a large black man whose eyes were crooked behind his thick glasses. He brought us in to one of the communal cells, where eight to twelve men would be held together and the walls bugged, and where he had at one time been incarcerated for his political beliefs. As we sat there, he told us about the political prisoner who had his eye pulled from its socket by one of the other inmates and about the beatings another man received for refusing to call the white warden “bass” (boss in Afrikaans). Part way through his narrative, one of the people on the tour raised his hand and said politely, “excuse me, sir, but we have to be back at our boat in five minutes”. Then we all filed out, down the hill and back to the mainland. You can see, I think, what I mean by surreal.
Nelson Mandela's cell
I continue to try to make sense of this place. I am listening to family stories, each one with its narrator’s particular point-of-view. One thing for sure about this family is that they can tell a story. I’m not certain, but I think I can hear my own in there somewhere.
I have probably said this before, but I continue to be amazed by how insulated people’s lives are here. They are so confined. Safety and security are mentioned literally in every conversation – someone has been the target of theft, someone else is having a new fence put in, a neighbour chased someone off her property last week. There are bars and locks on every single door, window and possible opening – even sometimes between rooms inside the house. When you are crossing the road, people remind you to wait on the sidewalk, because “they slow down and grab whatever they can”. If you want to go for a walk or run, you must stay within the eight square blocks of the neighbourhood (Rylands was a designated Indian Area under the Group Areas Act and is still populated primarily by Indian families who know each other at least in passing). Cars are equipped with an automatic feature, so as soon as you close the door, you are locked in. You do not go out after dark alone at all. It is not that I don’t believe the threat – I’m just not sure that the cure’s not worse. I do know I could not live like this for long. Everyone says it has become much more of a concern over the last ten years (everything is measured by these ten years since the new government was sworn in). I suppose it is because there is more freedom of movement, more expectation, more possibility and perhaps a new kind of frustration at continued inequalities. And of course, everything I am told is filtered through family and through, to some extent, the Indian community, which has, of course, its own politics to protect.
To end, I have found some great new music from the Cape. I am bringing back a few cds, but if you’re interested in the meantime, check out these links (also to your right):
http://cd.co.za/legends/2000plus/moment_cape_town.html
http://www.sheer.co.za/paul.html
http://www.sheer.co.za/index.html
Love to you all (especially for making it this far, if you’re still reading this crazy long message),
s.
posted by The Finding Princess at 12:54 p.m.
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