Good Hope


I'm still somewhat ambivalent about how cameras add and detract from raw experience, but my two weeks in South Africa were such a dazzling sensory surfeit that pictures were ideal for chronicling its beauties. They are also useful for gloating. So.


We spent most of our time in Cape Town, which is a fair distance from the Cape of Good Hope but shares its entrancing medley of ocean and highland. The drive to Chapman's Peak -- you see a tiny slice of it above; my point-and-shoot didn't quite cut it -- was so spectacular that a friend said she'd have made the 18-hour flight just for that view.

A fun corollary of the land form is that the Cape area is swept with the most fabulous winds, at least during the summer. The day we drove to the Cape of Good Hope you could actually jump up vertically and land a few inches forward. (Untangling hair was considerably less fun, but ah well.)


I turned 22 when I was there, and Cape Town was such a mesmerising gift that I only remembered my birthday when I was sitting in the church pastored by our guide, who is also an associate professor and the co-director of the policy research institute that hosted us.

It was a largely working class, coloured church (South Africans are classified as black, white, coloured or Indian) and was uncannily reminiscent of any number of churches I've visited at home, barring the drummer's distinctive jive. Like that Christmas midnight mass in a Milwaukee cathedral, it was a beautiful service -- but with a vastly different philosophy of sound. Instead of soaring structured harmonies, this congregation embraced sound and all its marvelous dissonances -- sort of like Bronte versus Austen.


After a brief stop at one of the many gorgeous craft markets, we all went for lunch (during which my travel buddies found out it was my birthday because one of them asked me how old I was and I got flustered). I had "Malaysian-style calamari with briyani fried rice and stir-fried vegetables," another superb reminder of home.

Slaves from the Malay Archipelago were brought to the Cape by the Dutch East India Company several centuries ago; to this day, Muslims in South Africa are called Cape Malays, and many familiar flavours persist in local cuisine.

[Tangent to family: yes, I now eat sotong. Sorry for all those years of whining. :)]


After lunch, we frolicked in the Atlantic Ocean at Fishhoek, one of a few beaches we hit throughout the trip. Given that the twelve of us were purportedly examining post-apartheid social cohesion and economic policy, I felt mildly hypocritical at all the touristy things we did, but still had a blast -- it would have been difficult not to.


Next we took cable cars up the flat-topped Table Mountain, which overlooks Cape Town, and watched the most arresting sunset. Because we were a kilometre above sea level, you could see the horizon curve from rose to crimson and back.


On our way down, we were treated to yet another magnificent panorama of Cape Town: because of the slopes surrounding this city, any drive through it yields tremendous cityscapes. What prettier way to end a birthday? (Although my birthday actually ended with Haagen Das and cocktails with the group, back in the sanitised overpriced Waterfront area we were staying in.)


We drove down the Garden Route for two days, breaking our journey at beach-front chalets in Knysna, eventually reaching the Addo Elephant National Park -- the real Discovery Channel. Having lions all of two metres from your safari jeep is an oddly humbling experience. The game reserve rangers were also excellent cooks; the dinner menu included grilled springbok and bread pudding.


Another day, we headed to to Boulders Beach, a little strip of beach in a residential area that is also home to some 3000 penguins. We were only there for twenty minutes or so, during which the insane Cape Town breeze contrived to jam my camera lens with sand. Thankfully, nice people at a camera shop fixed it with an aerosol spray.


One delightful thing about visiting South Africa was enjoying the cultural vestiges of British colonisation. This cab, for example, made me inordinately happy. Both the Singaporean in the group and I brought back little jars of Marmite and Bovril.

Said jars contributed to the somewhat illegal stash that I imported yesterday. The bulk of the stash, however, was booze that I brought in for some under-21s in our group. -- going to a wine estate in Stellenbosch for a tasting did weaken the reserve.

On my part, I took advantage of my friends by dragging four of them to watch Tshepang, an achingly exquisite play by Lara Foot Newton set in rural South Africa and redolent with cruel humour.


Walking around Bo-Kaap, the Malay quarter, was another happy echo of home. My roommate and I talked to some residents who told us that "terima kasih" remains part of the Cape Malay vocabulary. We also hiked to a shrine dedicated to the first Malay settlers: the Tana Baru Cemetery.


In addition to lectures by faculty from three universities, we spent a day at Parliament hearing from members of both the majority African National Congress and the opposition's Democratic Alliance. Some of us rankled at the condescending propaganda sent our way by some research analysts there; all of us relished the delicious cheap food at the canteen there.


We also took the ferry out to Robben Island, where Mandela and numerous other political prisoners were incarcerated under the apartheid regime. My eye allergies and eyelid eczema were at their most annoying that day, so some people thought I was crying -- part of me did want to weep, thinking both about South Africa's past and Malaysia's present.


Then there was a harrowing tour of some townships, established for blacks by white apartheid rulers, who christened these areas with names that have meanings like "new horizons" and "our pride" -- one wonders whether these names were more lip service or mockery.

These townships, mostly shanties, accommodate the bulk of those who relocate from rural areas -- whether domestic or from Zimbabwe, Malawi, Nigeria and other sub-saharan nations -- seeking a better life. Whether or not they find it is another story: some townships have up to 95 percent unemployment rates; most are rife with brutal crime and HIV/AIDS. It was a cripplingly tragic contrast to the scores of beachfront properties we had seen earlier on the trip.


And here are my personal souvenirs from ECON 25, Winter Study 2009. I'm rather proud of myself for keeping my spending -- restaurant meals, fast food, presents, (wine), and all -- within the daily allowances we got.

I must say, though, that it felt incongruous going from a stronger currency to a weaker one: for once I was the "American" tourist trying not to say, "That's so cheap!" after ever mental conversion. Not least because I'm horrified at the amount of money I spent if I think in ringgit.

It was also the first time that I crossed national borders without feeling the need to modulate the way I spoke. With a pseudo-American accent, funding from my college and pretty clothes from thrift store and clearance sales, I explored Cape Town in a suspension of borrowed privilege.

And I loved that city. We'll see if my borrowed privilege ever brings me back to her lovely people again.






Terima kasih.