I flew into Cape Town on one of Mango's (a South African budget airline) neon orange planes. In my imagination, the plane had a crew dressed as mangoes and an in-flight meal of mangoes and eventually ended by crashing into the Atlantic Ocean. My fears about flying in an aircraft that is the namesake of a fruit proved, thankfully, to be unfounded and I even got a free pack of gum upon disembarkation.
I spent my first day in Cape Town on a wine tour led by a professor whose second job is playing piano in lounges and third job is apparently this. Besides the two of us, there was an Irish family of four led by a cricket-obsessed matriarch. The drinking age in South Africa is 18, and still, when we arrived at the winery for our first tasting, I was asked if I intended to drink, I believe, their polite way of asking if I am old enough to drink. We visited four wineries, and the tastings were surprisingly unpretentious and they didn’t make us spit. I wished there was somewhere spit out the brandy though; it was vile and turned the gentle alcohol-in-the-morning pulsing behind the eyebrows into a pounding headache which I quelled later with an enormous bowl of pea soup. Brandy should not be in the same sentence at 10 am. Ever. In between wineries, we had time to walk around Franschhoek, a vineyard town. It was there I stumbled upon a locally famous chocolate shop run by two coloured (not to be confused with the outdated American term for African Americans, these South Africans would perhaps be defined in America as bi or multi-racial of African and European descent) chocolatiers who were sponsored to learn the art of chocolate making in Belgium and now run their own very successful business. I sampled their creations in the form of truffles of the amarula, peppermint, coffee and honey and anise varieties.
The following day, which happened to be Easter, I spent in around the Cape of Good Hope. I watched seals frolic from a glass-bottom boat and penguins waddle in the most fantastic way on the beach in Simon’s Town. And I saw one penguin sitting on eggs! I get that’s what they are supposed to do, but I was still surprised somehow. Similarly, when the water splashed over the rails of the glass bottom boat and I tasted salt on my lips, I thought “weird” and then had to remind myself that I was on the ocean. I guess I’ve gotten used to being landlocked.
I was surprised and a little disappointed to find little open on Easter Monday, but I did get the opportunity to laze and sweat in the Long Street Baths. There was only one other person using the sauna, steam bath and plunge pool, and shortly after she left, when I thought I had maybe sweat out a little too much (my hair was dripping and plastered to my face although I hadn’t submerged my head under water), I decided to get out myself before I passed out alone. I showered and fell asleep in the bed provided in my changing stall. Then following the sage advice of the cleaner and various posters, I stumbled to a corner store to rehydrate with orange juice. I walked in slow motion (with the sidewalk seeming to swing up toward my face with every step) to a shopping mall at the waterfront to buy a book to take with me to the Botanical Gardens. After purchasing two books, I was on my way out the door when I was tempted by a movie theatre showing Slumdog Millionaire, and a restaurant with a glass case featuring several varieties of chocolate cake. I never did make it to the gardens but it was a blissful day.
I visited various museums while in Cape Town, and was most enamored with the National Gallery. The last time I was in an art museum, I was performing with a pan-African dance and music ensemble at a fundraiser at the Fogg in Cambridge, MA. The last time I was in a museum to look at art? I have a vague and fuzzy memory of wandering a Karen Walker exhibit with my friend Josh. I remember sitting outside and talking about what we saw and him telling me “good eye,” like a kind-hearted T-ball coach. I can’t really tell you about any of the exhibits I saw in the National Gallery; I was simply satisfied walking through rooms of art to the sound of my echoing footsteps. I also loved the District 6 Museum, a small but powerful museum documenting the black and coloured families who were displaced from the area of Cape Town known as District 6 during apartheid when the neighborhood was designated a whites only area.
I spent one morning on Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela and others were imprisoned during apartheid. Although the tour guides are all former inmates, I found the experience oddly stark and unemotional, and I couldn’t tell if I found the experience so compelling despite or because of that. Perhaps the moment that I most appreciated was when our guide said, “I didn’t decide to come back to the island and give tours because I want to talk about happened to me here everyday. I came because I needed a job.” Taking a taxi back to the hostel from the ferry, the driver, upon hearing that I live in Lesotho said he would never live there because “there are too many black people there.” That comment juxtaposed against a morning spent on Robben Island left me feeling strange all day and I was already in my room before I realized I was still thinking about how to respond to the driver and hadn’t said anything.
The next day I moved from my hostel to stay with friends. Zoey is in South Africa from NYU law school for a semester of study and an internship and Shingi, who assisted my pre-Soweto Marathon carbo-loading, temporarily relocated from Johannesburg to Cape Town to be with her. Although Zoey and I grew up minutes from each other in New Jersey and both went to NYU, we didn’t meet until we both studied in Ghana, so it seemed particularly fitting to meet up in Africa. She took me to a little specialty foods store to stock up on tofu, nuts and tahini, and a craft store that made me manic with the overwhelming variety of glues. Zoey made me stir fry and pancakes and introduced me to bunny chow, a South African specialty (from Durban in particular) that consists of a hollowed loaf of bread filled with curry. We bought some around the corner from her house, and ate it outside along with fancy chocolate leftover from Easter. Cheap curry followed by expensive chocolate- I love eating with Zoey! Mostly, I read on Zoey’s couch while she did schoolwork, or went through my Sesotho flashcards while Shingi studied his Zulu beside me and we compared languages. We went out one night to a movie theatre. Ok, not just any movie theatre, the Labia Movie Theatre, and the unintentional crude comments that emerged as we planned our outing to the Labia were far more entertaining than the movie itself, as was the fact that wine was on sale at the concession stand and the ticket-takers thought nothing of the fact that we brought a huge chocolate bunny with us.
My last night in Cape Town, the three of us went to see a performance of Cinderella by the Cape Town City ballet at my reqeust. Given a variety of dance performance options, I normally wouldn’t choose a ballet, especially a classical ballet, especially Cinderella. But, there weren’t choices, and like art museums, a dance performance is something I haven’t experienced in awhile. The sets were beautiful as were the costumes, and the diversity of the cast and the fact that the women weren’t emaciated was very refreshing. But the dancing was awful. The women wobbled in their pointe shoes, and I held my breath on every lift waiting for the men to drop their partners. By the first pas de deux, I was telepathically and profusely apologizing to my companions. At intermission, Zoey and I exchanged a look of mutual disappointment, while Shingi tried to keep an open mind about his first ballet experience and commented on the strength of the women’s toes, the prominence of the male genitalia in tights and wondered whether or not the ballerina playing “Winter,” was actually a man. I was wondering the same thing myself but, sadly, we never found out because the theatre charged for programs, a fact we found more ridiculous than the dance-off between the ugly stepsisters.
The morning my flight took off, I had a great run in a downpour. Running at sea level was a treat after all these months in the mountains. I ran once or twice very day I was in Cape Town, and I had to move my legs so fast to get out of breath I thought I was going to trip over my own feet. All week, despite enjoying the clear skies, I thought the only thing that would make for a more perfect run was a mile or two of teeming rain. Well, I got it, and one moment, I was wringing out my sopping wet t-shirt so I could pack it and the next I was waiting in line to get stamped at the border with my neighbor commiserating that school holidays are never, ever long enough.
I spent my first day in Cape Town on a wine tour led by a professor whose second job is playing piano in lounges and third job is apparently this. Besides the two of us, there was an Irish family of four led by a cricket-obsessed matriarch. The drinking age in South Africa is 18, and still, when we arrived at the winery for our first tasting, I was asked if I intended to drink, I believe, their polite way of asking if I am old enough to drink. We visited four wineries, and the tastings were surprisingly unpretentious and they didn’t make us spit. I wished there was somewhere spit out the brandy though; it was vile and turned the gentle alcohol-in-the-morning pulsing behind the eyebrows into a pounding headache which I quelled later with an enormous bowl of pea soup. Brandy should not be in the same sentence at 10 am. Ever. In between wineries, we had time to walk around Franschhoek, a vineyard town. It was there I stumbled upon a locally famous chocolate shop run by two coloured (not to be confused with the outdated American term for African Americans, these South Africans would perhaps be defined in America as bi or multi-racial of African and European descent) chocolatiers who were sponsored to learn the art of chocolate making in Belgium and now run their own very successful business. I sampled their creations in the form of truffles of the amarula, peppermint, coffee and honey and anise varieties.
The following day, which happened to be Easter, I spent in around the Cape of Good Hope. I watched seals frolic from a glass-bottom boat and penguins waddle in the most fantastic way on the beach in Simon’s Town. And I saw one penguin sitting on eggs! I get that’s what they are supposed to do, but I was still surprised somehow. Similarly, when the water splashed over the rails of the glass bottom boat and I tasted salt on my lips, I thought “weird” and then had to remind myself that I was on the ocean. I guess I’ve gotten used to being landlocked.
I was surprised and a little disappointed to find little open on Easter Monday, but I did get the opportunity to laze and sweat in the Long Street Baths. There was only one other person using the sauna, steam bath and plunge pool, and shortly after she left, when I thought I had maybe sweat out a little too much (my hair was dripping and plastered to my face although I hadn’t submerged my head under water), I decided to get out myself before I passed out alone. I showered and fell asleep in the bed provided in my changing stall. Then following the sage advice of the cleaner and various posters, I stumbled to a corner store to rehydrate with orange juice. I walked in slow motion (with the sidewalk seeming to swing up toward my face with every step) to a shopping mall at the waterfront to buy a book to take with me to the Botanical Gardens. After purchasing two books, I was on my way out the door when I was tempted by a movie theatre showing Slumdog Millionaire, and a restaurant with a glass case featuring several varieties of chocolate cake. I never did make it to the gardens but it was a blissful day.
I visited various museums while in Cape Town, and was most enamored with the National Gallery. The last time I was in an art museum, I was performing with a pan-African dance and music ensemble at a fundraiser at the Fogg in Cambridge, MA. The last time I was in a museum to look at art? I have a vague and fuzzy memory of wandering a Karen Walker exhibit with my friend Josh. I remember sitting outside and talking about what we saw and him telling me “good eye,” like a kind-hearted T-ball coach. I can’t really tell you about any of the exhibits I saw in the National Gallery; I was simply satisfied walking through rooms of art to the sound of my echoing footsteps. I also loved the District 6 Museum, a small but powerful museum documenting the black and coloured families who were displaced from the area of Cape Town known as District 6 during apartheid when the neighborhood was designated a whites only area.
I spent one morning on Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela and others were imprisoned during apartheid. Although the tour guides are all former inmates, I found the experience oddly stark and unemotional, and I couldn’t tell if I found the experience so compelling despite or because of that. Perhaps the moment that I most appreciated was when our guide said, “I didn’t decide to come back to the island and give tours because I want to talk about happened to me here everyday. I came because I needed a job.” Taking a taxi back to the hostel from the ferry, the driver, upon hearing that I live in Lesotho said he would never live there because “there are too many black people there.” That comment juxtaposed against a morning spent on Robben Island left me feeling strange all day and I was already in my room before I realized I was still thinking about how to respond to the driver and hadn’t said anything.
The next day I moved from my hostel to stay with friends. Zoey is in South Africa from NYU law school for a semester of study and an internship and Shingi, who assisted my pre-Soweto Marathon carbo-loading, temporarily relocated from Johannesburg to Cape Town to be with her. Although Zoey and I grew up minutes from each other in New Jersey and both went to NYU, we didn’t meet until we both studied in Ghana, so it seemed particularly fitting to meet up in Africa. She took me to a little specialty foods store to stock up on tofu, nuts and tahini, and a craft store that made me manic with the overwhelming variety of glues. Zoey made me stir fry and pancakes and introduced me to bunny chow, a South African specialty (from Durban in particular) that consists of a hollowed loaf of bread filled with curry. We bought some around the corner from her house, and ate it outside along with fancy chocolate leftover from Easter. Cheap curry followed by expensive chocolate- I love eating with Zoey! Mostly, I read on Zoey’s couch while she did schoolwork, or went through my Sesotho flashcards while Shingi studied his Zulu beside me and we compared languages. We went out one night to a movie theatre. Ok, not just any movie theatre, the Labia Movie Theatre, and the unintentional crude comments that emerged as we planned our outing to the Labia were far more entertaining than the movie itself, as was the fact that wine was on sale at the concession stand and the ticket-takers thought nothing of the fact that we brought a huge chocolate bunny with us.
My last night in Cape Town, the three of us went to see a performance of Cinderella by the Cape Town City ballet at my reqeust. Given a variety of dance performance options, I normally wouldn’t choose a ballet, especially a classical ballet, especially Cinderella. But, there weren’t choices, and like art museums, a dance performance is something I haven’t experienced in awhile. The sets were beautiful as were the costumes, and the diversity of the cast and the fact that the women weren’t emaciated was very refreshing. But the dancing was awful. The women wobbled in their pointe shoes, and I held my breath on every lift waiting for the men to drop their partners. By the first pas de deux, I was telepathically and profusely apologizing to my companions. At intermission, Zoey and I exchanged a look of mutual disappointment, while Shingi tried to keep an open mind about his first ballet experience and commented on the strength of the women’s toes, the prominence of the male genitalia in tights and wondered whether or not the ballerina playing “Winter,” was actually a man. I was wondering the same thing myself but, sadly, we never found out because the theatre charged for programs, a fact we found more ridiculous than the dance-off between the ugly stepsisters.
The morning my flight took off, I had a great run in a downpour. Running at sea level was a treat after all these months in the mountains. I ran once or twice very day I was in Cape Town, and I had to move my legs so fast to get out of breath I thought I was going to trip over my own feet. All week, despite enjoying the clear skies, I thought the only thing that would make for a more perfect run was a mile or two of teeming rain. Well, I got it, and one moment, I was wringing out my sopping wet t-shirt so I could pack it and the next I was waiting in line to get stamped at the border with my neighbor commiserating that school holidays are never, ever long enough.
2 comments:
The Taxi driver who made the comment, was he black or white?
I don't think either. I guessed coloured but I didn't ask.
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