Into Africa

Today I board a plane that will take me 1600 miles Northwest of Cape Town to Londolozi Game Reserve - the inspiration and original impetus for this trip.  This next stage I expect should be a decidedly different landscape than the backdrop of Cape Town and its surroundings.

While part of me is filled with forward-looking excitement for the days to come in this next segment of my journey, another part looks back at my time in the Cape region with gratitude, appreciation and respect for all it has shared with me.

I have enjoyed a diversity of cultures and experiences that all blend together in a unique way - in the food, the people, the art and music.  I have experienced places of great beauty and great emptiness.   I have learned of capes and colonization.  I have seen the place where two great Oceans meet and their merging currents affect an entire hemisphere if not beyond.   Where ghosts may very well walk the beaches if they don’t sail the seas in a flying ghost ship.   And perhaps the most amazing discovery Fynbos!

The one thing I haven’t really touched on in these posts is the human history and colonization of South Africa and all of the long-term harmful affect it has had on this country and its people.   Beginning in the 17th century with the impact on the indigenous people and their cultures, later with Apartheid.    It is hard to journey through Cape Town without noticing the damage.  The class gap.  The 100s of square miles of shacks which serve as some minimum viable degree of housing for this City’s poor.   Commuting miles to and from work each day by foot or by bike or hitchhiking just to eke out enough to survive.    The reported crime rate - I say reported because I thankfully saw none in my 6 days here.   The extent that the more well off will go in order to protect their houses and stuff.  This is not social biodiversity.  This is unhealthy.

These harsh truths cast as stark a contrast as the bare rocky coast of Cape Agulhas when compared to the rolling hills of the wine country or the white sand beaches.   However, I won’t dwell on a past that cannot be changed.

I prefer instead to look forward to a future where all this great cultural diversity of African, Dutch, German, French and even a smattering of Portuguese along with all that have followed continue to grow and adapt through past and future adversity and in so doing develop an advanced set of social coping mechanisms that make this city and country as culturally diverse, resilient and beautiful as the Fynbos that carpet the majestic peaks of Table Mountain and the windblown crags of Cape Point.