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| Protea - National Flower of South Africa |
Cape Town, South Africa
We have been journeying (traveling and recuperating) for 4 days, 5 days by time zone. Day begins with breakfast at the Hotel Verde, within walking distance, but not a safe walking distance from the the airport. Our fellow FF traveler asked if she could walk to the hotel. She was told yes it was within walking distance, but she would most likely be relieved of her luggage along the way. The hotel is surrounded by a wall and electronic gate in a light industrial area outside of the CPT terminal.
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| Hotel View From Inside the Walled Nature- Jogging Trail |
The terrible draught in South Africa of the past few years has been lessened this season with rainfall. But water is precious. There are rolling blackouts, called “load shading”, of electricity. Politically, “load shading” sounds so much better than blackouts, but it still means the same thing. Locals say the country’s power has been mismanaged, corrupted, and political. The infrastructure of coal and diesel electric generation is failing. Whether for real or for political reasons, the power is cut for 2-3 hours, 3 times every day, in different sections of the province.
Manufacturing companies, daily businesses that depend on lights, and electricity of computers, copiers, air conditioning, electric stoves, television, teapots, elevators, refrigeration, security gates, etc. are dysfunctional for 8 hours a day, disrupting people’s lives and strangling the economy as employers try to grow their businesses, maintain production and pay their workers for the idyl non-productive times during “load shading”.
The inside of the Hotel Verde belies the outside concrete industrial surroundings, and the craziness of “load shading”. It is a model of serene homeyness, conservation, art from repurposed materials, and sustainable practices. There were signs everywhere regarding how the hotel and hotel guests could contribute to conserving water, generating electricity by climbing the stairs up, but taking the elevator down (gravity generation of electricity), using the electricity generating exercising machines in the gym, and keeping the temperature at certain range, etc.
We are only peripherally aware of the scheduled power blackouts when the lights momentarily flicker and the electronic hum of the room refrigerator and our electronic devices die a quick electric death, and the generator fires up or the power company’s electricity surges back on. We are glad we brought our surge protector and plug strip for our devices.
Within the walls of the hotel complex, a lovely jogging trail winds through a garden with a “natural’ swimming hole, active beehives, hydroponic vegetable garden outside of the kitchen. We have yet to see anything of the Cape outside of the airport or the walls of the hotel and are impressed. We stayed in the hotel two nights.
The first night we arrived in the dark, the second evening we had dinner with one of our journey mates, Rita from Missoula, Montana. Rita has spent the afternoon catching up with Julia, a graduate school classmate whose home is in Cape Town. They have not seen each other for twenty years.
We are invited to have dinner with them in the hotel restaurant. In our conversation with Julia, we indicate how impressed we are with the hotel and inquire if this is the norm. Oh no, she says, the hotel is a leader in this effort, and most businesses and homes have yet to follow. She shares with us how disappointed she is in South Africa’s beauty being covered with litter and garbage, crumbling infrastructure, uncontrolled migration, lack off private jobs, inflation and the government corruption and mismanagement that has led to the economic decline. Our curiosity grows. We are sheltered within the gated community.
After breakfast on the Day 5, we leave the hotel for a very brief ride back to the airport terminal where California and Montana are to meet- up with nine other Friendship Force travelers from the coordinating club of Dallas, Texas and others from San Antonio, Texas, Madison Wisconsin, Canada, Australia, Germany, and the UK, and of course our hosts from Friendship Force of the Cape of Good Hope.
We return to the International Arrivals Terminal where we had arrived two nights before ourselves to meet and greet arrivals from 11:00 am until nearly 1:00 pm.
We meet Verna who is the host coordinator for FF Cape of Good Hope and Mary who is the ambassador coordinator from Dallas, Texas. Everyone is welcoming and friendly, but it is a organized chaos meeting so many people, determining who is who, and waiting for new arrivals. Unlike a journey with members of our club whom we know, we are joining FF members from several different clubs as well as hosts. With the exception of Rita who met earlier, everyone his a new face, a new name, and has a unique story. After nearly 2 hours at the airport, everyone has arrived.
We weave our way out of the terminal to a bus that was to transport us 15 minutes away to a welcome lunch at a FF Cape of Good Hope home. Our drive out of the airport took us past a shanty city through increasingly more substantial homes the farther we drove from the airport until we reached a more affluent neighborhood. Crime is rampant and most houses have walls or fences to prevent easy intrusion.
We were greeted by many more hosts, who paired up with their ambassadors as we exited the bus, who transferred ambassador bags to host's private vehicles. Our host, Margi, is president of the FFCGH, and she and several other women were busy inside getting lunch on the table. We were asked to bring our bags inside until after lunch. In the back of our lunch host’s home, we stepped through a darkened kitchen down into a large outdoor covered patio where chairs were arranged along with tables laden with vegetables, appetizers, and roasted chicken.
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| Margi, FFCoGH President and our Host welcomes us |
After a brief welcome by Margi and explanation of how “load shading” would control much of our activities during our visit and which we would immediately feel the effects by not having hot tea until the electricity came back on, we ate and mingled until it was time to depart with our hosts.
Russ and I, along with Margi and Helen, another FFCGH member and day host arrived at Margi’s home which she shares with her older sister Annie, friend Trevor, and two lovely dogs.
The living room was filled with family visitors, Annie’s son, his fiancé, and her parents were in town from Port Elizabeth to make plans for a wedding next January. Two more ladies, came to visit. The electricity was on and Margi wanted to get to the grocery store and back again to start cooking dinner before the electricity went off at 6:00 pm.
We enjoyed an hour of conversation with family. When Margi returned, the family visitors left. There were still several friends in the house, some of whom were in the kitchen helping Margi with dinner, and some in the living room chatting with us. We took a few minutes out from the conversation to go to our room and unpack before it got too dark to see anything. The electricity was off again.
Fortunately, Russ and I had packed our headlamps. When we finished unpacking, the dining room table was lit with candles. Everyone loved the headlamps, but we switched them off once we saw the candles. Headlamps are great for doing your own work, but are blinding for anyone looking at you. Margi had prepared a tasty dinner of fried yellow tail (tuna-family fish), fresh green salad, avocados, bread and butter for dinner with both red and white wine.
Five of us started dinner together while one cousin and one friend, left for church, and joined us later for dinner. Then their was someone calling from the gate, another friend Rod stopped by to say hello. We are told that we will meet up again with Rod at the farewell party as he is the singing entertainment. The lights came back on after 8:00 pm. We continued to chat, friends said goodbye, and we were getting ready for bed, when three more family members stopped by to say hello. I think it was close to 10:00 pm before the house had quieted down, and we all retired for the night. Phew! It's been a long and interesting day meeting more people than we can keep count.
Tomorrow we are up early to go to Table Mountain and to do some more sight seeing.
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