Blog Post 5: Learning To Know A Foreign City
The City of Cape Town is
situated in a circle around three main mountains: Table Mountain, Lion’s Head,
and Devil’s Peak. If you stay close to these mountains, your personal safety is
more or less assured. It’s venturing out into the horizon that gives you a
face-to-face interaction with some of the famous crime of South Africa.
The first time I got a real look at the city of Cape Town, I was standing
against a guardrail on top of something called Signal Hill. Forming
the “body” of Lion’s Head mountain, Signal Hill is a popular jumping-off point
for paragliders. If you look straight up from most of Cape Town’s beaches, you
can frequently see a paraglider sail gracefully off the hill and into thin
air. It was a warm day, and though I wasn’t dressed for the weather, the
slight change in altitude and the breeze made things comfortable. The view out
toward the sea was absolutely incredible. No less incredible was the view of
the city as it wrapped its way around the mountains. I think in that moment I
felt as if I were standing on top of a giant map, staring down at a city that
suddenly decided to make directional sense.
I was with a woman named Joan Rapp, a friend
who, when they were both in college, had studied abroad with my grandmother in
Paris. Just after the end of apartheid, she seized the opportunity to work at a
previously segregated university as a liaison between all the universities
situated in the Western Cape province. As we, two people who had never met
before, stood staring silently out at the vastness of the bottom of the world,
I took a deep breath and embraced the comforting silence. Joan was already
giving me everything my grandmother had promised she would, just by bringing
Signal Hill to my attention.
Months before I left for South Africa, just
after I had discovered I was accepted into the program in the first place,
several of my relatives and friends suddenly realized the relevance of
acquaintances they had living in the far off city of Cape Town, South Africa.
So far, Joan is the only one I have actually met. And what a wonderful
experience it was to meet her.
As we stood, Joan took her arm and made a
sweeping motion along the buildings hugging the coastline below us. This area,
she explained, was referred to as “Sea Point”. I realized as she said those
words that if I wanted to get to really know the city I had been living in for
the past two months, I should pay full attention. “Sea Point,” I whispered
quietly in affirmation.
My visit with Joan was so much more informative
than I expected. There is a rich, rich history within this country, and each
new place I go has only further proven that. As I mentioned before, Joan first
came to Cape Town just after the end of apartheid rule, and has experienced an
incredibly broad range of political climates. In the car on the way from a
small ice cream shop to our dinner reservation, Joan and I chatted a bit about
the politics of South Africa. “It’s the worst it’s been right now,” she said
quietly. Although I knew I had chosen to come to the city in a time of dicey
protests and demonstrations, I was floored to hear that Joan thought things to
be so bad.
Shortly after my visit with Joan, my mom
flew into the country with one of her friends from college. We began our
adventure at Kruger National Park, a national park roughly the size of the
Netherlands and situated in Mpumalanga, a province on the eastern side of South
Africa. It was a fabulous experience, and we saw so many animals I had never
imagined possible to actually see in the wild. But as our plane set back down
in Cape Town, I remember breathing a sigh of relief. I don’t think I knew until
that moment just how extensive this feeling of being at home in Cape Town had
become.
I think the best part of my mom being here was
twofold. For one thing, I was enamored with the fact that for the first time, I
had someone who was truly and shamelessly interested in doing tourist
activities. We rode in a hop-on/hop-off bus, went to a place called “World of
Birds”, and I took my second tour to the Cape Point (the most southern place in
the continent of Africa), and my second tour of Robben Island. Her hotel was
even in a place called the V&A Waterfront, one of the most tourist-centered
locations in the city. Created originally by the Dutch East India Company as a
small port used strictly for trade with ships sailing to Eastern Africa and the
Far East, the V&A has actually become an extremely developed place, housing
a large selection of restaurants, trade shops, and a wide variety of marine
tour centered activities.[1]
But for another, having my mom here reminded me
of just how much I have adapted myself to make this place my home. In several
blog posts before I have highlighted a common theme of wanting to know more
about this place. For a while, I felt so lost in a sea of information. I felt
as if I didn’t know this place, and that I never truly would. But in all the
information thrown to me as I pretended to be a tourist with my mom and her
friend, I found myself surprised at how much I did know. I think it’s safe to
say that a lot of the information I received in the week I spent with my mom
only supplemented the base of knowledge I had already formed.
I do know this place. I know it in a way that is
completely personal and completely individual. And I think that’s the best way
to know it.
