500 Years of History

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At Breakfast
Slept very well again but still not quite long enough. Each night I hope for eight hours but experiencing the day and night seems so much more important than sleeping. This morning's yoga practice was much better -- the stiffness from 24 hours of airport/airplane time is finally receding.

Midnight
What a day! No time, sadly, to journal -- will have to carve out some time tomorrow for reflection. In short: Walking tour of Cape Town with Diane, covering many center city landmarks and encompassing 500 years of history. Midway in our walking tour we stopped at Rainbow Experience and watched a movie about Nelson Mandela; also stood in the plaza and looked up to the city hall balcony from which he gave his first speech after his release from jail. We walked through the "company garden" park, past the National Library (equivalent to their Library of Congress!) and Parliament. Then an hour at the Sixth District Museum.

At 2pm we met up with Siviwe, a 20-something young man from the township Langa. He took us on an enlightening and possibly life-altering tour of Langa, beginning at the cultural center and concluding with a performance by young boys who he teaches dance as part of an after school club.

We got back to the B&B just before dinner -- we met Jessy at Miller's Thumb for a wonderful dinner and great conversation with the architect of our vacation. Then back to the lounge at the B&B ... Leslie and Linda and I had a two hour discussion about our day (involving some wine of course). Peelling back the layers of our reactions to our tour of Langa, we found ourselves assessing our individual ability to somehow make the world a better place ... concluding that the best way to help is to find the intersection of your heart and your skills. We're all still trying to figure out what that means.


Leslie said this several times during the trip, in completely different situations:
"We went half way across the globe . . . and found ourselves."

And this is a post that I put on facebook on my friend Lauren's page in response to a thread about how thankful we should be for things we take for granted in the U.S. :
"Feeling fortunate about all of our privileges back at home as we pass different township shacks during each day of our vacation. Seriously rethinking my personal contributions to the world community. Horizon-widening travel is good for the soul and yet requires some soul searching as well. "
November 15 at 8:44am ·

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