Friday, 27 January 2012

Sunday Driving or Strange Baptism

We set out on a peaceful Sunday drive around the Peninsula and discover some strange politics,  two very different tribes and some spectacular scenery...
At the top of Chapman's Peak, a long queue of traffic and we are brought to a crawl by a large crowd of really cool Capetonians who have turned out in force with their dogs, prams, babies, bottled water and organic sammies - some have even come with their skateboards 
 
To join the protest march from Hout Bay to the proposed site of a multi-million rand toll plaza and office block
‘OFFICES NOT INDIGENOUS 2 CHAPPIES’, the very rude‘JOU MA SE TOL’, and ‘MURRAY AND ROBBERS DON’T STEAL OUR LAND, are some of the more creative placards on show. The anger is unmistakeable -  outrage at the idea of an office block in this World Heritage Site and the fact that taxpayers would be funding half of the R54 million luxury building for Entilini - the toll company - already unpopular for its high toll fees.


Here a group of aggrieved Khoi San and Squatter Camp people say they have not been consulted at all and that the money could be better spent on desperately needed housing



We continue on our way, first for a long walk on Noordhoek Beach - only one doggy poo drama! necessitating one change of footwear and one stern lecture about 'looking where you are going' - then on to incredible Kommetjie










Where we stop for a picnic lunch of last night's salt beef on rye, amidst dog-walkers and Sunday swimmers
Across the white strand a strange group gathers
Old Testament figures, dark skinned, white robed against a luminous blue sky


A little straggling group of strandloopers winds its way along the white sand

Soon augmented by a whole crowd of spiritual searchers
Women stand in silent prayer and contemplation while surfers ride the waves on their own spiritual quest


 
The Church of Bethlehem - so I am informed by one of the young women, a girl barely out of her teens with a babe on her hip, who speaks in faltering English and doesn't understand my questions. A group of evangelicals perhaps from the local informal settlement or township, an outdoor baptism of new converts to this particular sect? 
The women, clad in white garments, carrying infants and children, 
gather quietly on the shore


 
A tent pops up and little children play happily in the dried kelp 
Mr P is ready to capture this ethereal moment with his lovely new camera - for which I thank him
Women wander fully clothed, wading knee-deep into the water, hands raised beseeching


 
The clear treble of hymns in an unknown tongue, waft through the glistening air as the women clap and sway
A group of priests duck a fellow initiate beneath the glassy green waves
 
White gowns rendered transparent by the sharp cold shock of the salty sea and burnished black skulls like carved ebony, they welcome a new member to their church







A silhouetted man, like a Triton, gives benediction to his gods
Turbaned women clap and sing entirely oblivious of us or the icy blue water
Twin parallel universes of faith and secularism - intersecting for a brief moment
A woman prepares to immerse herself in the all-forgiving ocean, her sins and sorrows washed away
A dread-locked child waits quietly on the beach for her mother

Beach walkers hurry on their way averting their eyes from the strange scene
An elderly trio under a sky blue parasol ignores the whole scene, taking solace from a thermos
We continue on to the surfers' paradise of Witsands
A haven of brilliant ultramarine ocean and clean white sands


Dune bushes grow right down to the beach


A thousand shades of blue


Indigo, navy, cobalt , turquoise and a polarised shore


 
Waves curl endlessly onto the beach

Miles and miles of sand from Noordhoek to Kommetjie and on to Long Beach

Past Witsands, Misty Sands and all the way to Cape Point if we had time

Then on over Redhill to Simonstown
Where South Africa's navy lies moored in the beautiful bay
And little yachts float like butterflies against a blue sky or like Great Whites on a calm ocean. 
Yes, everything here can be read in more than one way....


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