Robben Island
Wednesday, July 26 |
| Yesterday I left the cozy surroundings of the Delheim winery and got a ride into Capetown where I have the generous use of a small apartment in Sea Point, a seaside resort just around the bend from Capetown proper. It is very convenient because there is a bus that runs up and down the shore road to a major tourist establishment called the Victoria and Albert Warf. This is not quite the Victoria and Albert you might expect. The Albert was her oldest son, who was here for the dedication of the first jetty, and Victoria later got a jetty named for herself when the harbor was expanded. |
| Jetties are important here, even though there is a bay, the winds can be rough, and just last week a man died trying to save a tourist who had walked out on the jetty during a windstorm (The tourist was saved by helicopter). |
| I began my first day "on my own" by acquiring a cell phone. It seemed like the logical thing to do since I am going to be spending time with different people on different days and the apartment has no phone. Everyone around here has a cell phone, so I feel right at home, and thrilled this afternoon when it rang while I was on top of the famous table mountain. Of course, now I have to learn how to turn off the ring before the world classes me with those boors with no cell phone manners... |
| I the set forth for the trip by boat to Robben Island, South Africa's "Alcatraz" where many political prisoners, including Nelson Mandela were kept during the apartheid regime. While Capetown can easily remind one of San Francisco, on a sunny day the beach side is more like San Diego or La Jolla, but Robben Island is much farther out in the bay than Alcatraz. It takes about twenty minutes to get there by high-speed catamaran. The island is also larger, and far more benign looking. The island was first used for lepers, later ads a general prison, and finally for political prisoners who spent the year 1963-64 building their prison. It is understated as prisons go, one story high, with some bunk dormitories and then the single cells used for the leadership, like Mandela. On the tour, you first travel around the island by bus with a guide, and then take a walking tour of the prison with a guide who was himself a former political prisoner. Our guide was so young he had arrived just after Mandela had been transferred to the mainland, but it was fascinating to hear him describe how the all sat in disbelief listening to DeKlerk's announcement that Mandela was freed. |
| As I travel around I keep noticing whether or not the group (restaurant, bus..) is integrated. On the Robben Island tour we took attendance by country. In addition to the American, English, Dutch visitors you would expect, there were German, Italian, Finish, Pakistani and Malaysian. I am happy to say there was also one black (colored?) couple who were native South Africans visiting on holiday from Pretoria. There were many blacks on the other bus, but that group (half black and half white) turned out to be a missionary team from the US heading to Botswana for a month or so. I spent some time talking to a young man from Kentucky who was with still another group, similar to Doctors Without Borders. He was sponsored by his church to come and work as an eye doctor and he had been doing his service in Malawi. |
| For those who wanted the end of the tour of Robben Island included a walk to look at the penguins who have gained recent notoriety after an oil slick. They were cleaned up by volunteers, taken around the horn and released in the Eastern cape to find their way back once the waters cleared. They certainly looked happy enough and none the worse for wear. |
| Taking advantage of a perfect summer's day in he middle of winter, I had a quick lunch and then headed up onto Capetown's most famous landmark: Table Mountain. I got there is a public taxi, a small bus reminiscent of some of the vehicles I rode in last summer in China. Six of us sat in the back, with the door held closed with a piece of old tire. No matter, we were quickly up the hill at the cable car station where we proceeded on in the fanciest of cable cars. The car is circular and the interior floor rotates so that everyone can look out and see a 360 degree panoramic view. It was fancier than any of the cars I had seen in Switzerland, but then again, no one was carrying skis. |
| On top I enjoyed the panoramic vistas in all directions and talked with a young black man from Chicago who has been here for the last fifteen months, writing his Ph.D.. dissertation on democracy in Africa. I said, "I hope you are an optimist." He said, yes, he was an optimist by nature adding, yes, it takes an optimist..." From the top of table mountain South Africa looks so idyllic in the bright son, with a marvelous harbor, a significant train connection and a beautiful historic town center, that you could easily forget all the problems. |
| The guide books will tell you that Capetown is in most ways an exception to all the real issues of South Africa, but I will know better after net week when I spend four days at an all-black school in a township. |
| I will close with a thought offered by my nephew Hugh, recently back from his second trip to china: There are currently more people studying English as a second language in China than there are speaking it as a native tongue in the rest of the world. |
This is a functioning coke machine on the boat dock to Robben Island
