My family journey has now bought me to Cape Town, my Grandfather William Ernest Botha was born here. The name Botha is far to a common name to chase, it is a typical Afrikaner name, as common as Smith and Jones is to the English. However my mother said he was a Methodist preacher and was very strict, so I wanted to explore Cape Town.

What a beautiful city – as I spied Table Mountain, I remembered twice leaving this African coast as a child once in 1963 on the SS Galileo Galileo (Lloyd Triestiono) and again as a teenager in 1971 on the FairStar – two long ocean vouages. I dont remember much except for watching the ship pull out of the harbour and seeing that beautiful mountain cradling the city and a long ocean journey.

  
  
On face value Cape Town seems a bustling cosmopolitan city with a diverse population. Mixed marraigeis the norm here, the disparity between the rich and poor is palable.  The population is roughly about 3.7 million in the metro area. The ethnic and racial make up according to the taxi drivers are roughly 40% coloured, 40% black, 12% while and the rest is whatever you see, I think he meant Asian or Indian. As opposed to Durban which has the largest Indian population outside of India.

Here the beggars are more prolific than in Durban and there are more security people here, so on almost every corner there is a secuity person, namely men. These secuirty people are there to make you feel safer. I have been relatively good whilst travelling in Africa, that is eyes forward and not engaging, for me this has been very difficult. However in Cape Town they come right up to you….”please madam, I am hungry, I need some food” not only are they saying this but they look hungry…. this one day I made the mistake and hesitated and looked at the woman, from then I was lost. She offered to go to the shop and let me buy her some food, I thought this was a great idea. We went to the local shop and she picked a large box of cornflakes, 2 litres of milk and a 500gm bag of sugar, she said for taste. I happily  paid and we both went our separate ways. A few seconds from leaving the shop a security man came up to me and said ” hello madam how are you today” I said good, have i done something wrong…. he said ” what does your heart tell you” I said my heart was happy… he said “then you have done nothing wrong…. and went on to say that I must not buy things for these people because they will sell them for drugs…that woman will sell it back to the shop keeper for money for drugs…..” I must say I felt very disapointed, did not know if what he said was true…but it stopped me from doing it again. Later that night I was buying my dinner from a chicken place simplar to Nandos and a boy maybe 10 – 12yrs asked for some food…. it was very hard….to know what to do…this was the ugly side to Cape Town.

The best way to see Cape Town if travelling alone is on the Big Red Bus tours, they are a great trip, hop on hop off…best way to see the whole of Cape Town, I did this as well as the Sun Set tour and the tour of a Township….. all though that was a bit unverving.

The other personal experience was I went to a Methodist service on Sunday All Saints day, I wanted to experience a Methodist Service and compare the difference between this and Catholism…. they were very friendly and welcoming… the service its self was slightly different but really the prinicples are the same… the Pastor Alan made a very impassioned sermon about the plight of the universtiy students and the need for calm and rational discussion…. I was truly capitvated by his sermon. We spoke after the service and he put me in touch with the the Rhodes University Cory Library in Grahamstown which houses the largest Methodist archives…. another step closer.

  
The weather was a little disapointing in that I had four days of cloud/sunshine and wind – wind meant that the cable car was not working to get to the top of Table Mountain…and to walk up was two hours, however the cloud also meant that the top was closed. Still I enjoyed looking down from the Table base and have had a fabulous time in Cape Town – it is well worth a visit….. next stop Port Elizabeth and I still have to write about Durban.