The weather continued to not cooperate - it was cool with sporadic rain. But the rain was not hard enough to deter us from setting out, on foot, to explore an adjacent neighborhood, Bo Kaap, and then to head downtown for a trip to the District 6 Museum.
Bo Kaap, also known as the Cape Malay Quarter, is the center of Cape Town's Muslim community. It is just west of the central business district, nestled on the slopes of Signal Mountain and is home to a population of some 6,000 people, many of whom are descendants of slaves from Indonesia, Java, Celebes and Bali brought over in the 17th and 18th centuries by the Dutch East Indies Company. This is a picturesque neighborhood with narrow, cobblestone streets and many old houses, painted in bright colors.
A little rain, but not enough to stop us.
Brightly colored houses in Bo Kaap.
Hmm, Yellow? Pink? Yellow? Pink? Can't make up my mind.
We left Bo Kaap and walked west into the center of Cape Town's business district. We came to the District 6 Museum, which documents the forced removal of 60,000 inhabitants from 1966 onwards. The apartheid government declared District 6 a "white area", transferred the population to a barren and desolate area outside of the city called the Cape Flats and then bulldozed the homes, flattening an entire neighborhood.
The museum, housed in a Methodist church that is the only public building left standing in District 6, is a powerful and emotional collection of pictures, memorabilia and belongings of the people who once lived there. But sometimes the simple tangibles are not sufficient to jar the sensibilities of visitors to the museum. So the museum employs guides who are people who actually lived through the nightmare of the forced removals. Patiently, slowly and with great emotion, our guide described what it was like, as a young boy, to be uprooted and thrown out of one's home; to lose one's neighborhood and one's neighbors; to watch the wretched and demoralizing effect it had on the elders who had lived there for their entire lives - an existence that was to vanish, only to be retained in the memory but not in the reality of every day life. It was a most moving and emotional experience to hear the story retold by a man who lived through it.
Entering the District 6 Museum.
Our guide delivered a stirring vision of what it must have been like to live through the nightmare of Apartheid's forced removal and destruction of his neighborhood.
A tower of street signs harkens one back to a neighborhood that once was and is no more.
The words of American poet Langston Hughes, alongside a map of the former neighborhood, are written on the floor of the District 6 museum.
Our visit lasted only an hour but to me it was a graphic reminder that Cape Town and South Africa were not only exciting tourist destinations and places of great natural beauty and chic cities. This was also the site of one of humanity's great struggles against barbarism that resulted in the triumph of the human spirit. Reason enough to travel here.
Tomorrow, we frolic with the most adorable little critters: the South African Penguins of Boulders Beach. Plus, we travel to the end of Africa (well, almost): the Cape of Good Hope. Hope to see you then. - Matt
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