Southern Africa (Part II.II): June 2017

Observatory, South Africa

Wednesday, 29 June 2017

These passed two weeks have been concurrently hectic and hallowed. While work was an assortment of things—such as a theological conversation about sola scriptura and death, a memorial for a recently-passed friend of the congregation, a weekly “cell group” meeting in which we discussed the theological implications of our proclaiming belief in “one true God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,” a sharing of my testimony at a “friendship group,” a drive to the airport for Dave and Reneé, half of a Presbytery meeting, a handful of communion-administering pastoral visits, a plethora of hours spent in my regular coffee shop, a sermon on Acts 17, and a few “normal” days spent typing away said sermon in an unfriendly office that never gets any sunlight and is just a bit wintrier than the inside of the glaciers I visited in Iceland—it is the list of extracurricular things that I would like to highlight in what remains of this post.

Monday, 5 June. I spent the day exploring Cape Town. Choosing not to put a destination into my phone and instead taking whatever road looked most adventurous, I ended up driving around the Vredehoek district, which leans up against Devil’s Peak. I then parked in the city centre and lost my way walking around District Six, where I had coffee in both Deluxe and Haas—two shops along Buitenkant Street. At the latter, I jittered over a cuppa the world’s strongest coffee and a rich chocolate cake.

Tuesday, 6 June. The most violent maelstrom to hit a democratic Western Cape lingered over Cape Town and left us without power for forty-eight hours. Even before the storm made landfall, schools and businesses—and even the church—closed their doors for a mid-week holiday. While I took the opportunity to visit Sea Point early Wednesday morning to watch waves crash into the sea wall and cover the boardwalk, me, and my camera in a nasty sunburned sea foam, it also meant cold candlelit nights of propane-tank-heated soup and early electric-blanket-less bedtimes. So, after getting soaked by swells but refusing to go to a hauntingly eclipsed home, I enjoyed a long afternoon of fresh salmon and flat whites at Bootleggers Coffee Company at a calmer seaside in Kalk Bay.

Saturday, 10 June. A sermon needed to be written, so it was composed at Café Nero in Green Point along the seaside and over a smoky salmon benedict and a cuppa Greek coffee. I took the long way home through Woodstock before curling up on the couch to watch Mr Holmes with Dave and Reneé. I read through my completed sermon and then a chapter of Vanauken’s A Severe Mercy before falling into a nervous sleep thinking about the delivery of my first sermon (ever) the following morning, or as I feared: mourning.

Sunday, 11 June. The sermon went well. I received good criticism from those to whom I preached, a few of whom were reverends, who said, “Don’t read it, but preach it”; “Less words, more pauses”; and “Do you reallyread Romans 1 into Acts 17?” Exceptional, though, was that nobody fell asleep and began snoring while I spoke about the application of cultural diversity and inclusivity in Christ. Not feeling a strong call to the pastorate, I found that the reverends’ feedback did not relieve my anxiety but convicted me to think honestly about my vocation. But, I still adamantly refused to listen to anybody that said I would make a great pastor, because I wouldn’t.

Monday, 12 June. I moved from Dave and Reneé’s in Claremont to Graeme and Di’s in Constantia. Considered some of South Africa’s best wine country, I will live amongst the vacant vineyards of this wintertime southern suburb for the next month. But what I sacrificed in nearness to the church, I more than made up in my two new friends: Oliver and Penny—a Maltese poodle and a dachshund, respectively. Although they infamously bark at the passing of every car, and even a think thought too loudly, we have become nippy chum. At the end of every meal, I make sure to leave the smallest bit of scrap for them. And fortunately for them (and unfortunately for me), we recently had beef tongue for dinner—they now know all too well from where they are most likely to receive a morsel from the table.

Tuesday, 13 June. The drive into work took me nearly an hour. Hopefully this is not the regular; they were doing some roadside clearing all along M3, which brought traffic to a halt. But by the grace of Nigel, Kotha, Susan, and Gerrard, I was welcomed into the church, late better than never. Around three, I left work a little early to have coffee with another new friend. Paige attended church on Sunday and, as another American, we were instinctually pleased to meet. We sipped americanos in Amen! Art Collective—hers, with a bit of cream and sugar, and mine, neat—while we relayed our dissimilar impressions of Cape Town life, discovered that our stateside homes were separated by a mere two-hour drive, and figured that we ought to go great white shark cage diving together. When the shop owner had tabled all the chairs but ours and began to linger just out of eyeshot, we decided to take our conversation to Rhodes Memorial to sit on lion statues and watch distant street lights flicker on with the passing of day. And like that, we became friends.

Thursday, 15 June. After unwisely overeating on fish n chips, calamari, and prawns with Nigel and his wife, Saviour, for an end-of-the-work-week feast (Friday was a national holiday), I decided to climb to the top of Lion’s Head with Paige and her (and now, my) Brazilian friend, Fernanda. Lion’s Head stands alone and juts out above the city, and from its top one is provided a clear view over the City Centre, across Table Mountain, along the Twelve Apostles, and beyond Camp’s Bay. The three of us summited the mountain in just under an hour. Together, along with about two dozen other summiteers, we watched an auburn sunset tinge the world its colour. The softness of sky complimented the weaving of roads that wound beneath our feet and contrasted the grey-streaked legs of the many mountains surrounding us: a panorama most picturesque. After descending the mountain in darkness, some of which was scooted down on behinds, some of which required ladders and chains, and some of which required breaking to swig wine with strangers-become-summit-buddies, we drove to a sushi house in Observatory called 1980 to celebrate an afternoon well spent. The day expired as we mollycoddled our appetites with coupled night caps and cake at Cocoa Chai Chi and wine at Paige’s. And like that, we became good friends.

Friday, 16 June. While I woke without an idea of what I would do with the holiday, Graeme and Di recommended that I drive south down the coast of False Bay to Simon’s Town to see the penguins. For a few rand, I was admitted entry to Boulders Beach, home to South Africa’s very own “jackass penguin,” appropriately named for the males’ bray. What is lost is whether this name was bestowed by farmers thinking the sounds belonged to strayed donkey or by locals grown sick and tired of the volume at which territorial disputes were settled.

But despite their sounds and their smell, for both are quite foul, hobbling across the sandy shore were at least a hundred black and white and grey penguins—denizens of the Western Cape! This wasn’t a zoo: these ostensibly out-of-place seabirds were properly permitted to swim off into the ocean at will. I watched the adults come and go while little toddler-penguins played with an abandoned shell an arm’s reach from where I smilingly snapped too many photos. I was free to watch the little stuffed-animal-esque fur balls waddle futilely back and forth, but contact was verboten (due to the oils in our skin). For about an hour, I watched real-life penguins in their real-life habitat in South Africa, a delightfully fortunate oddity.

Again, I was without an idea of what would come of the rest of the day. I figured I should go to a coffee shop and write, but I wasn’t in the mood to work. I wanted to keep having fun; it was revitalising to have fun. So, to avoid the temptation to sit at one of my regular coffee shops, I kept south along the coastal road and went until it ended, and kept going, until the continent became ocean.

In the silhouette of the Cape Point lighthouse, I beheld the great imaginary boundary betwixt the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Bartholomew Dias, the late fifteenth-century navigator named the place the Cape of Storms in 1488; a more optimistic King John II of Portugal renamed the cape one of Good Hope. It has since served as the seaward midpoint between Europe and the East. In surplus of beautiful rolling hills and crumbling cliff sides, blue depths and ivory breaks, and ostriches, baboons, and lizards a plenty, Cape Point was a paradise of paradises. I toddled about beyond the last of the platforms from which one could squint into the warm crosswind running down the coast and off the end of the world. I jumped the last of manmade pillars and advanced down the precipice from the old lighthouse to the new one until another step would have sent me plummeting into the frothiness below. I crossed over the cloven crags of the hopeful cape and through the misty cover of a sun-and-sea-beaten shore. But no matter the direction of my meandering, without ebb went on and on the sound of swashing.

One might expect my leaving the peninsula to be wrought with downheartedness; but the return journey did not lack lustre. With the pointed and hopeful mirror-bound, ahead wound a road above the coast of False Bay and below a sky that could not make up which colour it wanted to be and did not settle on shadowy grey until I was in the Constantia neighbourhood and near home. And after a neat glass of scotch, a fat slab of smoked pork chop, and a hearty reminiscence with Graeme and Di, I was off to sleep and ready for the proper weekend to commence.