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Cape Town, South Africa
Thursday, April 3 2003
setting: Johannesburg, Gauteng Province, South Africa
Today was the day that Gretchen and I flew to Cape Town to further broaden our South African experience. Dina dropped us off at the Johannesburg airport, we rented a cell phone, and then caught our plane. The airport is fairly safe, particularly by Johannesburg standards, but there are nonetheless plenty of people there trying to scratch out a living from all the wallets waltzing past. We had to walk to the international terminal to get our cell phone, and on the way back we were shadowed by this guy who kept trying to be helpful in hopes of either getting a tip or else weaseling into our confidence for a much bigger score. Since we didn't have much in the way of baggage, the only thing he could do was tell us the way to the domestic terminal. He did this a good half dozen times, staying with us as he did so. When it seemed he was going to follow us all the way there, Gretchen gave him a stern look and admonished, "Alright, Thank You!"
I was interested in how the landscape would change as we flew diagonally across South Africa. Near Johannesburg, the ground was a patchwork of farms. The shapes were mostly precise rectangles, but these gradually gave way to circles as the land became arid. This happened not far into the flight. From then on, we flew over what looked like desert. There were still farmsteads here and there at regular, widely-spaced intervals, but it was difficult to imagine anything worth selling being grown down there.
As we approached the southern cape, the landforms became dramatically rugged. I'd always thought of Africa as a mostly non-mountainous country, but this certainly isn't true at its southern extreme.
On the short bus ride from our plane to our arrival terminal, Gretchen pointed out a man with "a huge goiter." Oh my god! The poor guy! On one side of his neck, just behind his jaw and below his ear, was a huge swelling, roughly the size and shape of a squash. It was covered with a bandage, but that provided about as much concealment as Monica Lewinsky's thong.
Our first goal in Cape Town was to pick up our car at Avis. It was a smallish white Volkswagen, though it was much bigger than Dina's Renault. Dina's travel agent had sternly cautioned us against getting a car as small as the one we got, but we were gradually arriving at the conclusion that most of her customers insist on top-of-the-line luxury, an easy thing for foreigners to afford in South Africa given the devalued Rand and the cheap price of labor.
I was already noticing the differences in racial composition in Cape Town compared to the way it had been in Johannesburg. The people working the Avis counter, for example, all appeared to be "coloured" - the old Apartheid-era term referring to people of mixed white and indigenous ancestry. Apartheid also classified the indigenous Khoisan peoples as coloured, due entirely to the lighter color of their skin. I hadn't seen many coloured people in Johannesburg, where most of the non-whites had been blacks. Though the use of such Apartheid terms might initially seem offensive, it reflects an entrenched reality. The cultures artificially cultivated under Apartheid continue to this day and will take many years and considerable government action to integrate.
The guy at Avis suggested a shortcut for driving through Cape Town en route to the Liberty Lodge, the bed and breakfast where we'd be staying. Unfortunately, this had the effect of getting us totally lost in the heart of an unfamiliar city. I was already terribly stressed out from the novelty of driving on the left. Add to that the complexity of poorly-labeled one-way streets and the possible danger of carjackers and you can easily understand why I was at wit's end. Gretchen wasn't helping either. She herself couldn't drive because of psychological scars resulting from a terrifying misadventure with left-side driving in Ireland, and her way of dealing with me was to become my biggest critic. This all reached a crisis along some narrow street. I misjudged the clearance to my left and the rearview mirror on that side struck a parked car with a loud thwap. I pulled over and Gretchen ran back to get what had fallen off, the piece of glass that fits in the rearview mirror housing. It was now full of cracks, but it snapped right back where it belonged.
I was so happy to no longer be driving once we made it to the Liberty Lodge. We could kick back, watch a little teevee, or maybe lavish affection upon the two resident Dachshunds, Zippy and Buttons.
After we were settled, Gretchen and I went for a short walk down Kloof Street. We stopped first at an African crafts store on the corner and looked at the things for sale. It was rich with the many things ingenious Africans can make from random bits of detritus. Using only telephone wire, they can weave colorful baskets featuring traditional geometric patterns. With steel wire, they can fashion a sculpture representing just about any three dimensional object. Combining beads and wire, they make giraffes and lizards. Using numerous colorful labels from sardine cans, they can reupholster a bowl with clever repetitive designs. Even in this store, which makes its profit by selling such stuff to tourists at what is probably a substantial markup, it was all dirt cheap. Like a hillbilly at a Walmart after winning the PowerBall, Gretchen began piling things she liked on the counter.
My normal reaction upon seeing clever artwork for sale is to stash away the idea for making it myself - perhaps better and on a grander scale. With this stuff here, though, to make it myself would be a poor application of my time. Even if I restricted my efforts to recreating the most expensive items, the amount of time required (particularly given the obvious level of skill necessary) would mean that I'd be working at something like fifty cents an hour. For once it my life, I could see the value in just outsourcing a creative project to other people, in this case poor but skillful South Africans. This might be an obvious thought - even a starting point - for most people, but for me, someone who always starts with the view that I should do everything myself - it was another milestone on the road to the end of innocence. It was also deeply disturbing. Maybe I should just let these people take over art entirely and devote myself to things for which I am uniquely talented. This seems like a crazy overreaction in retrospect - after all, there's a huge difference between these clever sculptural works and the things I've made in idle luxury of North American slackerdom. But it nonetheless reflects the reality that one of my fundamental axioms about creativity was altered as I looked at art today in this Cape Town craft store. It was far more dramatic than anything I've ever felt looking at art in a museum.
A little further down Kloof we had lunch at an informal Italian restaurant. At first we were just going to get a beer but we didn't really know what sort of restaurant it was. We asked the guy at the door if he had beer and he said, rightly, "It's not a restaurant unless it has beer." Our waiter was white, the first white waiter we'd seen in South Africa since getting here.
Later Gretchen convinced me to drive us up to the lower cable station so we could ride the cable car up Table Mountain, a 3000 foot rectangular cliff that forms part of Cape Town's unique natural skyline. Gretchen's argument was that I shouldn't let the stress of driving on the left get the best of me. It was like getting back on a horse after being bucked off - an essential psychological ritual. So off we went and I drove there without difficulty. It was a straight shot and other traffic was light. Several parkeological empires stretched along the road in front of the cable station, and we parked in the most far-flung of these. We noted that at least one of the parkeologists was white.
The cable car was fully loaded with white people as it carried us up Table Mountain. It hung on a pivot and turned around nearly twice on its way to the top, giving all of us Kodak moments with respect to the Cape Town waterfront and the semi-barren cliffs.
The top of Table Mountain was considerably colder than its foot had been - and now we were insufficiently dressed. The cold was compounded by the howling wind creating and destroying clouds like the hand of a jealous God acting in mysterious ways. One moment we could see down to Clifton Beach on the far side of the mountain and the next we couldn't. There's a restaurant at the top, and I took the opportunity to drink a beer. We also patronized a gift shop, allowing us to send post cards from the squalling end of Africa.
Originally we'd planned to stay for the sunset and drunk champagne. But the wind was so strong that the cable car had to be shut down Prematurely. Word informally came around the top of Table Mountain that it was being evacuated, and so we caught the next available ride down.
We paid our parkeologist his five Rand and then I drove us across the saddle connecting Table Mountain to Lion's Head and we descended to Clifton Beach. Our ultimate destination was Papa Dum's, an Indian restaurant recommended by the guy running the Liberty Lodge. We got to the door and found it locked, though there were clearly people inside. This gave Gretchen the impression that it was closed, but I knew from our experience at the crafts store that we were dealing with another South African convention. To prevent robbery, businesses lock their doors and only allow in the people of their choosing. I guess we didn't fit the profile of South African restaurant robbers, because they let us in. The food was excellent, repairing our damaged-since-London theory that Indian food is your best bet when dining within the republics of the Former British Empire.
See some photographs from the South Africa trip.
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