GUILT AND CAPE TOWN

Imagine Malibu without all those Californians or Santa Barbara, with a flat-topped, granite mountain just a few blocks inland from the sea.   That is Cape Town, stunningly beautiful, yet complex, where the weather is always perfect and there’s nary a cloud in the sky.

South Africa has 47 million people of which 12%, only 5 million, are white.  Just around the corner from every multi-million dollar (white) neighborhood, just over the hill from every tony beachfront (white) community, is a township teeming with (black) poverty and third-world infrastructure and containing 10x the population of the white areas nearby.  The Townships are never seen (unless, as we did,  one takes a wrong turn),  hidden off the main roads and byways.  But everyone knows they are there.   It is the third world abutting the first, with all of the spoils of the colonial era on display, in full panoramic color, a constant reminder of the imbalance between the races.  Based on mere observation, it would be easy to believe that there is a huge white majority in this country, similar to the U.S.     The only black people we see are those in the service and construction industries – waiters, housemaids and road crews. Why, Yosy and I ask ourselves, would anyone buy a $10 million house here, when 42 million people are underprivileged, without jobs, attend second class schools and live in massive shantytowns, where unemployment is above 50%?   Isn’t there a revolution just around the corner?  What will happen when 90+ year-old Nelson Mandela, who has lead the country out of apartheid and into legal equality with an obsessive insistence on peace and reconciliation, passes?  Isn’t it only a matter of time before the huge population of the black poor demand a larger share of the spoils from the whites? 

My friend Jaqui and her husband, Michael, South Africans born during the apartheid era, (which ended in the 1990’s), say that there is no need to worry.  The blacks here have seen the results of divesting the whites of their power.   Zimbabwe confiscated white farms, killed and injured many of the white citizens who had lived there for decades, going back to the time when it was known as Rhodesia, and took over control of the government.  Farming plummeted (the local population had never learned to manage the land) and inflation reached more than 1 million percent due to political mismanagement.  Zimbabwe went from a rich and well developed country to a poverty-stricken African one, where people are hungry and desperate, and corruption reigns.   The blacks of South Africa don’t want a Zimbabwe here.   It will be worse for the blacks then than it is now, say our friends, and the blacks know it.  No worries.

Still, that doesn’t alleviate the guilt, which, for me is more pervasive here than it was in much poorer West Africa, where everyone (except corrupt government officials) is equally destitute and hungry and the spoils are kept behind very high walls.   Here, the whites are well-fed, have fancy cars and homes, and good-paying jobs, while the overwhelming majority of the country is left out of the mix and without access to the good life.

Despite the guilt, I am catching up on important and much needed hygiene rituals.  Jaqui took me for a manicure, which was administered while lying down – that is, I was put on a massage table, with plush towels, while the manicurist worked on my nails.   How decadent!    I’ve had a pedicure and a facial, and I take two hot showers every day. I’ve been stuffing myself on buffet breakfasts, gourmet dinners and everything in-between.

We visited Robben Island, about 7 miles offshore, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years.   Former political prisoners acted as guides, while their former Afrikaan guards captained the ferries that took us to the Island.  Our guide was a prisoner from 1982 until his release in 1990, with Mandela.   He told us about the guards who buried two prisoners alive up to their necks, beat them and then forced them to drink the guards’ urine.   The prisoners survived and now work on the Island, side by side with their former guards.   That is Mandela’s Truth & Reconciliation policy in action.   As long as former tormentors tell the truth (and there are many eyewitnesses who can verify the veracity of a story), there will be no prison terms, no penalties, only Reconciliation.  It is a policy that has been successfully adopted by Rwanda after the genocide there and has helped both nations heal from their respective dark histories.

This morning, at 7 am, we climbed Lion’s Head Mountain, adjacent to Table Mountain, with Jaqui and Michael.   It took a little longer than usual, an hour rather than 45 minutes, and though not horribly strenuous, it was nevertheless fairly difficult for us New Yorkers not used to climbing much more than a flight of stairs.  We used chains, ladders and hand grabs near the top to climb the mountain’s steep, rocky face.   The 360-degree view of the sea, the mountains and the city below from the pointy top was as if from the clouds and the sky and I could have stayed there so much longer.  But some people have to work, (Jaqui & Michael) and so we made our way down fairly quickly, and had a wonderful breakfast overlooking the bay and the rocky coast.

I could easily live here (were it not for the hidden misery lurking all around, in plain sight).

 

WAHIB AND JOHN

As we pull in to our campsite for the night, which is a national animal preserve, two young boys, just pre-teen, run to greet us.    Wahib and John know the Dragoman truck, the company with which I am traveling.    Based in the UK, Dragoman offers long-haul overland travel to the remotest places on earth, providing only a fully-equipped and adapted Mercedes truck, a knowledgeable driver and group organizer, the latter charged with getting us from starting point to end point with as little hassle as possible.     He negotiates no group politics and conducts no entertainment.  He bargains the bribes (or refusal to pay them) at the ubiquitous police checkpoints, chooses the best camp sites and tries to keep us on schedule, local conditions permitting.   He decides where and when we food shop and camp.   Wahib and John greet the truck 2-3 times a year as it makes its way east to west then back again criss-crossing West Africa and, contrary to the truck’s unofficial rules, they are permitted to mingle and interact with the group.

Wherever we may be on the open rural road, whenever we stop for a meal and set up our table and food, basic as it is, we always have an audience.    Word spreads fast through the village that a truckload of foreigners has just arrived over the ridge.  The locals leave their huts and schools, workplaces and chores and run to witness the very unusual sight of white people passing through nowhere on their way to somewhere.    We drove 8 hours yesterday through northwestern Burkina, heading to Mali, and did not pass a single vehicle.  As we eat with a small crowd standing only a few feet away in a semi-circle around us, scores of pairs of eyes watch our every bite, hungry and hoping for a small scrap.  But “The Rule” for travelers now throughout Africa is “no handouts” of any kind – no food; not even leftovers, no money, no candy, no pens, no discarded articles of clothing.   “The Rule" is harsh, heart-breaking, and fails to harden the soul against the extreme poverty all around us.    We are constantly debating the pro’s and con’s of "The Rule" and look for ways to work within it without violating it, but we always come to the same conclusion:  "The Rule" is right.  If we share our food with the crowd around us, the next time the Dragoman truck or any other foreign traveler comes through, the crowd will be larger, and will come from points even further away.  If we give, rather than throw away our scraps,  there certainly will not be enough for everyone – how to choose who in the crowd receives and who does not?   Maybe we can give to the children only?    but if we do, the next time the children will be left home.   Should we simply leave our leftovers behind, in a neat, clean pile and let the hungry figure it out themselves?   The experience of those who know is that fighting among the people then breaks out and their very fragile equilibrium is destroyed, if even only temporarily.  Sharing and hand-outs seem to foster dependence as the locals will look to whites, even more than they already do, for their salvation – Ethiopia is an extreme example of this dependence.   The only way to soothe our conscience is to know, that at least this year, is a year free of drought,  and that the people are merely hungry, not starving.   They have lots of mango, cassava and banana to eat, although protein, dairy, and other food groups are rare and the craving for variety and subsistence in the menu is strong.

Wahib and John however are the exception to The Rule.   We played Frisbee and Hangman with them as the sun was setting (they beat us at both games).   They seemed to know, before we knew ourselves, when we had had enough of the game, when we needed to shower, when we needed to wash our filthy clothes or begin preparing dinner.   They disappeared minutes before we tired of the chore or the game; standing on the sidelines, watching and waiting to be called in to service, to answer a question; “where is the hot water switch?, when will the warthogs go home?”  Their English was good, they were polite.   A dropped  $5 note or ipod, was picked up and returned immediately to its owner.  The laundress who works for the park came to our site to chase the boys away but  Steve, the group leader, told her the boys could stay.   She insisted that they would steal and pester.   Steve knew these kids better.

When we ate dinner they disappeared to the shadows, without being told to do so,  sitting patiently beside our wash bowls, behind the truck.   As we ate and bantered, we had forgotten them in the dark, that they were there, quietly looking away so as not to intrude on our privacy.  Only when we began to clean up did they gently take my dish and begin scrubbing the food scraps, carefully rinsing and drying.   

We saw that Steve had prepared two huge plates of food before we even began to eat.  Sausage, rice, cooked vegetables, and lots of bread and butter.   The plates were covered and placed in a corner, given to Wahib and John only after we had finished our own meal and the dishes had been put away.    The boys ate, slowly and deliberately, in the darkness behind the truck.   But the moon was full and we saw that they were happy.