…and finally I get to the last post…
but don’t worry!
..there are stories of adventure and previously unknown levels of joy, as well as horrendous goodbyes.
A great idea would be to read this whilst listening to this in the background to give the whole thing a more jolly (and Zimbabwean) feeling.
So my final few months in Grahamstown involved 6 main things; travelling, spending large numbers of hours in cafes, gardening, getting as tanned as possible to maximise British jealousy, and festivalling (oh, and exams).
Me and two Dutch friends got a bus over to Coffee Bay, a very rural and beautiful area in The Wild Coast near East London. Rolling green hills, empty beaches, Cornwall-style cliffs, winding rivers, brightly painted rondavels, and the friendliest people (the name apparently arising from when a trade ship carrying coffee beans sunk in the bay, resulting in loads of coffee plants growing on the shore). Arriving at the backpackers, we joined in the braai and met some guys who agreed to take us surfing…for free! Bonfires were lit under amazing stars and conversation centred on living free of political control and other hippy-like stuff (nod and smile Simon, nod and smile).
The plan was to go surfing in the morning, but our surfing friend spotted a shark so we decided it might be a better idea to drive to a different beach.
So I’ve experience some pretty bad roads over the past year. Some horrendously bad (Mozambique I’m sure has more potholes than road). The roads here were terrible. I’d say likely on par with Mozambique. So it took us a real long time to get nowhere, but the views were really amazing, passing by rondavels located so picturesquely next to the ocean it was almost as if they were built there just for us to photo.
It’s not rare but reasonably uncommon for tourists to travel extensively in this area, mainly because of the roads (or lack of them), and so you feel a little like a celebrity with kids asking for sweets and people waving from their houses.
As well as surfing, we went hiking and jumped into rivers off cliffs, cooked Dutch pancakes, played with puppies (?), and met cool people. To add extra excitement, we missed the bus home and had to chase it with a taxi, waving our arms, shouting, and sticking our heads out the window…. not that strange here I guess as no-one seemed to look twice.
As well as Coffee Bay, me and some friends drove over to Hogsback for some top-notch hiking and cliff-sitting-guitar-playing…
As the weeks floated by, one-by-one I said goodbye to friends, mamas, and random local people. Grahamstown must be the definition of a close-knit community, and so you do get to become friendly with people you never even get the name of….security guards, cafe owners, car-hire shop staff (if you happen to be reading this Avis car hire man, you are a real great guy!)….. But these people were just as much a part of the experience. I also slowly said goodbye to various projects and societies which had a big influence on my time in Grahamstown; St Mary’s Development and Care Centre where I volunteered every week with kids (who still said ‘see you next week Simon’ despite telling them repeatedly that this was the end); the Masincedane Soup Kitchen where I gardened every week, and Rhodes Music Radio where I had a show every Wednesday. I met some really great people through these and had some incredible times, so this was quite a sad time.
Exams went by pretty quick, and as they didn’t even count towards my Leeds degree, I’ve got to admit I found it hard to put a lot of effort in. I also finished a pretty interesting semester-long zoology research project which involved cutting off spider’s heads, covering them in gold, and taking pictures of them through an electron microscope (here’s a sneak preview).
The last couple of weeks involved quite random events, such as jamming with guitar and saxophone in the botanical gardens, sitting in cafes for at least 4 hours continuously ordering rooibos tea, attending a 1-year-old’s birthday party, very nearly embarking on a spontaneous trip to Botswana (maybe it was time to stop drinking), dancing away at Ma rasta to dancehall reggae tunes, hiking up to the monument with crisps, champagne and blankets to watch the sunset, and cementing some great friendships.
Partially coincidentally, partially not, my last 11 days in Grahamstown coincided with the national arts festival. This was a pretty big deal. A town where a donkey going missing is the talk of the week, is transformed into a buzzing social scene, with pop-up restaurants, shops, markets, venues and accommodation everywhere. The entire university sports field is transformed into a ‘village green’, and there’s an odd variety of people which Grahamstown rarely sees…… tourists.
So that was a really good time seeing amazing South African jazz, controversial theatre, dance, films….and actually eating whatever food I wanted (not that dining hall crap) with my good friends. I also volunteered with the Raphael Centre (a local HIV/AIDS centre), helping out with an exhibition by the centre’s kids who painted their lifelong dreams.
Inconveniently, everyone has to leave university residences 48 hours after your last exam, which is particularly annoying for people with a home 10,000km away… But luckily a few weeks prior, I met an amazing girl who I got on really well with and so I stayed with her.
Leaving Grahamstown was weird but alright; after only living in big cities, Grahamstown seemed quite…..sleepy. But of course I had some incredible times in this little town over the past year.
And so I drove up to Pretoria with my great friends Denzil and Gerald, where I stayed with Denzil’s family for a few days. Pretoria’s the capital of SA (though there are confusingly three), but not as crazy as other capitals; nice old buildings, parks (which for some reason no-one seems to go to), museums and casual drinking spots. It’s a very Afrikaans city, and you do hear Afrikaans around you a lot of the time which is quite bazaar.
We then drove over into Limpopo (province bordering Botswana, Zimbabwe and Mozambique) where we stayed on Denzil’s gigantic farm for a few days. By ‘farm’ I mean huge mass of wildness, where there might be a few cows and lots of impala, warthog, kudu, giraffe, baboons, and even some leopards. Pretty sweet.
So naturally we spent the days driving a quadbike as fast as possible up the mountains (including getting stuck and having to hike down), hiking to dried-out waterfalls only to find we’d entered a leopard den with lots of crushed bones, firing guns (thats right), discovering amazing views whilst chasing kudu on koppies, and of course having braais. I also found myself in the weird situation of sitting in the back of a pick-up with three big Afrikaans guys holding guns with a dead impala laughing in Afrikaans.
I finally headed over to Johannesburg a few days before my flight, and stayed with my great friend Catherine on her smallholding. As expected, it was a real fun last few days, involving;
* Embracing lambs (see photo)
* Climbing the tallest building in Africa
* Visiting the Cradle of Humankind (massive excavation site where they’ve found hundreds of early hominin fossils)
* Having a great time at some botanical gardens with my top friend Calvin and, a waterfall and some eagles
* Having a final family goodbye braai with ‘the best boerewors in South Africa’, followed by trying to squeeze a years worth of stuff into one bag.
Hmmm so how to finish writing……..
Well as I’m sure you’ve gathered from reading any of this stuff over the past year, it’s been a very interesting time. I have met some of the most amazing people; seen some of the most beautiful things; eaten some of the most weird food; swam in some of the warmest (and coldest) oceans; danced some of the most unexpected moves; discovered some of the most intricate and addictive music; experienced some of the most weird and divided situations; rode one of the fastest land animals; driven on some of the most epic and unforgettable roadtrips; discovered falsity in some of the most unfair stereotypes; seen some of the most unbelievably captivating night skies, sunsets and sunrises; experienced some of the most hospitable and generous people; and, of course, learnt so unbelievably much about South Africa, Africa, and the World.
Oh, and spent some of the longest amount of time chasing small penguins…
Until next time
Into The Cape... 