As time here in Cape Town winds down, I’ve made sure that each day I have remaining will be one to remember. Time is the one thing in this world that has the ability to make me nervous, but I think it’s for the best.
Logan invited me to go to Koko’s Human Rights workshop in Nyanga with him on Friday. I feel that I haven’t seen enough of the townships here in Cape Town so I decided to go with him. We took a mini bus over to Nyanga and the minute we stepped out on the street we got about 12 variations of “do you need help” from people on the sidewalk. White people aren’t found in Nyanga too often, I think we may have stuck out a little.
Since people here run on Cape Town time everyone got to the workshop at 2:00. It was supposed to start at 12:30. Logan and I had a feeling that this would happen so we went to Linda’s take-out for lunch. This restaurant was just a makeshift kitchen with no running water in a trailer. We knew there was no running water because when Linda cleaned our spoons she filled a mug with water from a bucket, took it outside and poured the water over our spoons. I haven’t gotten sick yet so the delicious food was worth it. While we were waiting for our meal a little boy and girl came over and said “you are welcome in Nyanga east.” They even complimented Logan on his hair.
Julian getting a haircut in Nyanga
After getting my hair cut in a trailer, Koko showed us around Nyanga and brought us to his sister’s house. On our way through the township Logan and I were called colored by someone walking by. This made us super excited until some little boy said “look! Another whitey!” We went to a nearby bar for a little bit afterwards and took a mini cab home.
The next morning six of us left the house at 6:30a.m. We didn’t exactly know what we were in for, but our plan was to hike the 12 Apostles on the Table Mountain Range. I packed four liters of water, three pb&j’s, and two bananas. After about eight or nine hours of incredible sights and occasionally intense hiking the group ran pretty low on water and out of food. I’ll have to admit that the lack of water had me a little concerned but I personally was feeling all right. We may or may not have had other people in the group worrying a bit more but I was fairly confident that we would end up home some way or another.
Emily & Logan hiking 12 Apostles Mountain
We found the path that I knew we had to take but we still had a few doubters in the group. We made our way down Myburgh’s Waterfall Ravine when we met our savior, Jim. Jim is an ex-park ranger who hiked this incredibly eroded, steep path once already, about 20 years ago. I really think that fate or karma or destiny or something supernatural led Jim to us because we hadn’t seen another person for about 4 hours until this 60 year old tour guide crossed our path on one of the least travelled paths on the range. I’m still in shock. Anyways, this wonderful man showed us down the ravine while giving us nature lessons and all of that cool stuff. We ended up in Hout Bay where Ben, our RA, picked us up in his car. We may or may not have thought that we needed to be airlifted earlier in the hike so we called Ben who offered to pick us up if we made it down. This was again a gift from god because we definitely would not have found our way back from Hout Bay. So in the end, after 11 hours of hiking Ben drove us to McDonalds and back home and we fell asleep before 10.
Now I’m late to get ready for Mzoli’s, a popular Braai restaurant in Gugulethu. It’s BYOB (bring your own bread) because they only serve meat. Anyways, I’m going to wrap this up because I need to make today count as well. It’s been a great weekend
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