Budapest Calling: Township to Beach

wanting to go and see the ocean on a beautiful, sunny sunday afternoon, we decided to take the train down to Mitchell’s Plain (the largest ‘coloured’ township in Cape Town) and walk through the neighborhood till we hit the beach (maybe 30 or 45 min. walk). I had never before been to Mitchell’s Plain, effectively kept away by it’s reputation as a township and the whole pile of nasty associations that white people have with ‘townships,’ and how dangerous they are. But Mitchell’s Plain was a vibrant, inviting area, and many people happily greeted us and wished us a nice day. (I know it might be strange, and makes the blog less instructive in some way, but I don’t like photographing the townships, because I don’t feel like I exactly have the ‘right’ to do so, especially not to depict people living there without talking to them. Sorry, you’ll have to come and see for yourself…)

Once we reached the ocean we found a beautiful stretch of coastline, with many lillies and otherwise beautiful land, rocks and sand. It was very affirming and positive feeling to realize that even in this so-called dangerous, negative space, there is such a beautiful space to go and to just enjoy oneself. And yet, none of my white friends, all of whom go to the beach often and many of whom have cars, ever say, ‘let’s go to the beach by mitchell’s plain’ (or khayelitsha, for that matter, which also borders the indian ocean). Crazy. After we spent some time enjoying the ocean, we hitchhiked to good ole’ white/tourist muizenberg, to have dinner and to catch the train back home. We were picked up by a racist white couple that really wanted to pick us up so that they could tell us (four times, actually) that we’re in a really dangerous area, and really shouldn’t be there. No matter, we had a great time.

Eva was so happy here, she found it so beautiful…

i was very happy as well…

good ole’ muizenberg:

and here’s Eva’s favorite photo:

Budapest Calling: Sneaking into Nature

UWC has a great Nature Reserve. I’ve walked past it hundreds of times, but never gone in because it’s all fenced off and all the gates I found were locked. Eva and I found a way to break through the fence and explore. The place is beautiful and quite large, full of different plants and many many birds, and fun huts to sit and enjoy the nature in…

Budapest Calling: Alternative Sightseeing

My friend eva (also known as evi) came to visit me for ten days in august. We met when i was traveling in Budapest this june. Eva lives with my friend Lajos, and we really got to know each other better at Lajos’ birthday party, which is also where I met a whole bunch of other people from Budapest, most notably Istvan and Tunde. All of these great friends sent encouraging words of love and support, as well as a package with pictures and videos and a letter from Budapest. So, even though it was only evi here, I feel that it was Budapest calling, sending her down here. We had a wonderful period of days together, full of smiles and laughter and crazy adventures.

Here’s some photos from our first day of alternative sightseeing, wandering through Bo-Kaap, climbing up signal hill to have dinner at the ‘Europe’ rooftop (named so after the chairman and I visited there twice, each time before one of us was headed to Europe and now because Evi had just arrived from Europe).

the view from Bo-Kaap is awesome:

Bo-Kaap wall art:

This is Eva atop the ‘Europe’ rooftop. You can’t tell at all:

climbing down we ended up scrambling down the hill, with no path, in the dark, which meant that we slipped down onto our asses multiple times along the way… turns out we would repeat that insanity a view days later (but much worse) coming down from table mountain….

Paul’s First Time up Table Mountain

my friend paul moved in with me during the xenophobic attacks in late may, as his apartment that he shared with 9 other people from various countries in africa became totally overcrowded with ‘foreigners’ from the townships seeking refuge downtown. we lived together until early august, and had lots of fun times, learning to accommodate each other in our different world-views and lifestyles (i listened to more bob marley than ever in my life, as this was our main agreement in terms of music); and his excellent skills in chess hopefully rubbed off on me a bit. towards the end of his time living together, me and some friends took him up table mountain for the first time in his life. it was a great climb, up the ‘maximum risk’ route which winds directly under the cable car and requires a good bit of scrambling.

here’s paul at home:

and here’s our day climbing (with jan, jan’s friend karl, and daniel):

Alternative Sightseeing

i bought a fancy map of cape town so that i can begin, in the style of the my good friend lajos, some alternative sightseeing of the city. i started with anne, moving from district six (the sight of the largest forced removals in cape town, most notably when the area was declared to be a ‘whites only’ neighborhood in 1966 and 60,000+ people were forced out, and the buildings were bulldozed. no whites or buildings replaced the old residents during apartheid and very little re-development has been done since) to ndabeni (the place where 20,000 africans were forced to move out of district six at the beginning of the 20th century, which is now just an industrial area), then to pinelands (the intentionally designed suburbs built for whites only in the 20’s, which meant that the people of ndabeni had to be forced out, again, to langa).

here’s some photos from the district six section…

between my house and district six there’s this amazing filth pit:

but also some beautiful wall art:

district six:

another piece of great wall art:

trafalgar park, on the border of district six and woodstock is quite a nice space to be in:

Totally Not the Roof

Anne, a couchsurfer that stayed with me for a few days, decided to help me figure out how to climb up onto the roof of my apartment building. These videos document our successes at this task. In classical NGO format, I present here maximum documentation of doing nothing at all…

Chairman Hjof goes home

all kidding aside, all the things i’ve ever said about the chairman taken into account (all true of course) let me say in all honesty that my friend frithjof is an excellent man, and that it has been excellent to begin a friendship with him, and that i was very sad to see him leave south africa. the more time i spent with frithjof the more i grew to respect his heart, his integrity, his intelligence, and his ceaseless passion to truly engage with this world, rather than to just skate by on the minimum. frithjof is really a dynamic, caring and capable human being, and will surely build quite a fulfilling life for himself and those who come to know him. i hope to remain in the chairman’s life, and to see him again soon enough (i guess next time will be in europe…)

many people wanted to say goodbye to frothjof, so much so that we were almost competing for his attention. somehow frithjof juggled it all, and let himself laugh and cry and say the compliments which are so hard and necessary to say. he and i went up to the special ‘europe’ rooftop on signal hill (named such because we went there to say goodbye when i went on my trip to europe in june) and listened to a couple songs together, and i read him a totally inappropriate sad poem while looking out at sea point and the ocean.

five of us delivered him to the airport, and lena, simon and gerion made him a cake and brought him a big beer. it was all quite silly and somehow seemed appropriate.

Chairman Hjof sets fire to dragons

Carey and Brendan have a piece of land in the Drakensberg mountains. a beautiful stretch of land, curled in along the border of the national park and world heritage site. the nature of the ecosystem there requires that, if no natural fires occur within a period of roughly three years, there be controlled burning of the brush and trees. furthermore, this burning is helpful in the slow and ongoing process of removing the ‘invader’ species of plants which the colonial europeans planted in the area, both to make themselves feel ‘at home,’ in their colonized space, but also out of an expression of their belief in ‘dominion over all,’ a repugnant world-view which brendan and carey are working hard to counteract in themselves and others. the ‘alien’ species tend to crowd out the resources of the land, and therefore need to be burned and poisoned and physically removed to make way for indigenous species. the process of controlling the burning of 15 acres of land is absolutely spectacular. it was wonderful just to watch the whole process unfold…

this is the hut that is on the property now. another house, in another location is planned in the coming years…

ironically, we made a little campfire and sat and talked, while the mountainside was in flames…

the beautiful river was our source of clean drinking water, our escape option in case of emergency, and a great place for a game of chess:

walking home after a successful day of fire-starting (in the background, you can make of the spiny back of the dragon that gives the mountain range its name):

and the moon rose over the mountains…

Chairman Hjof in the valley of 1,000 hills

the chairman and i visited my friends carey and brendan. carey took us back to the spot in the valley of 1,000 hills that i thought was so beautiful on my last visit, but didn’t photograph. here are a couple images of it (missing the sunset that made last visit truly spectacular):

Chairman Hjof monkeys around in style, in Durban…

after staying one night in yet another crazy backpackers, and receiving their racist map of durban (see video above) we decided to head straight for the downtown area (majority black and indian) that we were cautioned against by the backpackers, and we spent a couple of days sleeping in a hotel in the red-light district and wandering around the busy downtown area. don’t know if that was any way more ‘authentic’ than the backpackers, but in some way it did seem slightly less fake and isolated.

something that did feel totally fake and weird though was the revolving restaurant we went to (only 1 of 37 in the whole world!!!!):