Sight-seeing with Cape Town Visitors

Recently we hosted two friends from the UK:

 Craig and Lewis loved Cape Town, and especially the Waterfront...
  
                                            
...which has a carnival atmosphere all year round, with buskers playing in many places and bands performing in the ampitheatre.

                                        
I chose these two photos because they both have 'cellos being played rather differently to when I played the 'cello many years ago!

                                         
A passer by kindly took this photo of the four of us, with Table mountain in the background.

This enormous copy of a space invader is constructed with drinks crates. It's actually the outside of a bar, which is open during the evenings.

 Nobel square, with statues of four South African Nobel Peace Prize winners, is also at the waterfront.

One Saturday we dropped Craig & Lewis at the waterfront for them to explore on their own.  They took the open top bus around the city:

 This reflection of them on the bus, I think is rather clever.

One of the places where passengers can disembark the bus is the cable car to travel up Table Mountain.

                                        
The old building on the Table top was once the cable car keeper's house, where his family stayed for months on end, now a gift shop.

You can even post your cards from the top of the mountain.

Another weekend we travelled out to Hermanus, the best land-based whale-watching place in the Western Cape. 

It's very hard to capture good photos of the whales with a small digital camera, but this one was about the best one taken, showing a mother with calves, in one of the bays.

Just to give an idea of the size of a fully grown Southern Right whale, which has no top dorsal fin, there is now a model on the sea front.

Another day they wanted to climb up Lion's Head, so we drove to Signal Hill to see if the weather was suitable for climbing. Sadly the mist had started to cover the mountain and it was quite windy, but they had a great view of Green Point Stadium, which was built for the World Cup in 2010.

As an alternative, we drove out to Hout Bay, a small fishing village, which comically has it's own passport. A few years ago the Mayor of Hout Bay tried to introduce the concept of Hout Bay being a separate republic to South Africa! Obviously the idea was never taken seriously, but someone did come up with a passport:  

 On an earlier visit with some friends, as a much travelled lady they decided I needed another passport to add to my collection!

On the beach at Hout Bay, Lewis enjoyed looking for shells, until a huge wave engulfed him.

Then as we travelled back into Cape Town along the coast road, it occured to us that the shape of the top of Lion's Head looked rather like one of the shells he had gathered. We stopped and had some fun, trying to place Lion's Head on Lewis' hand to show how similar it was. (You will have to use your imagination, but at the time it did look quite similar!)

Another day we took a very long drive up the west coast as far as Clanwilliam, in the cedarberg mountain range. Friends of ours have a small cottage there, so we were able to stay overnight. Sadly the weather was stormy, but we saw a beautiful rainbow over the dam:

 This area is the only place in the world where rooibos grows.  At this time of year it's a rather uninteresting-looking bush and we passed endless fields of it:

                                      
 We also visited the Rooibos factory, which is in Clanwilliam, where you can try the different teas and watch a video about its manufacture. There are so many rooibos products on the market now; drinks and foods, cometics and candles. It's caffeine-free and rich in anti-oxidants. They even make a green-rooibos tea, which is even healthier.

Unlike other teas, where only the leaves are harvested, the whole of the rooibos bush is gathered and dried to produce rooibos products.  I've been drinking rooibos tea since our first visit to Cape Town in 2006, and now Andy drinks it too. He really likes vanilla rooibos, so at the shop we bought several boxes of different flavours at half the supermarket prices.  We now wish we'd bought more, as our stocks are depleting fast.

The next day we continued our drive westward, from Clanwilliam to Lambert's Bay, and then turned south to follow the coast road all the way back into Cape Town. This took many hours, but we stopped regularly to explore the deserted beaches. Numerous smaller bays are dotted along this Southern Atlantic coastline. The boys left their mark in the sand - at least until the tide came in:

We really enjoyed travelling north, south, east and west, from our home, during the two weeks the boys were staying with us.  There's always something new to see in Cape Town - it's vast, and only a small corner of this enormous country of South Africa.

Grace Academy at CVA

CVA, Christian Vision Academy, housed within the site of the previous Christian Vocation Training College, now Chreso University, is a small primary school for local children, with mixed grade classes up to Grade 8 (UK Y9). 

The current Principal is Mr Timothy Dhiwa, here with his wife, also a teacher at the school:

One of the highlights of the Grace Academy Zambia trip is always the cultural concert. This year was the best ever, with CVA presenting a wide ranging programme, which included items from every grade in the school.

Their dramatic piece about village roles was really good:

1)The village Chief,

2) An old man,

3) An old woman,

4) The traditional healer,

...as was their fashion show:

Lower grades presented poems and songs...

                                   

...higher grades more songs and traditional dances

 With three younger girls challenging them!

Then it was time for Grace Academy to present their songs...

...and learn Zambian traditional dances - complete with grass skirts!

Also in the hall was a cultural corner with a beautifully laid out table of local foods:

 This is Kapenta - dried fish:

 Also sweet potatoes and ground nuts:

Papaya, oranges, tomatoes and dried corn (which is then ground into mealie meal to make the staple food of Zambia, nshima)

A grinding pot, brushes, gourds (squashes) and a game similar to draughts, using bottle tops for counters:

Also nearby were grass pictures which younger children had completed:

Later that day we climbed Sanjay Hill with some of the Grade 8 CVA students.

                                           


 Room at the top is limited so we gathered in smaller groups on the enormous iron pyrite outcrop, which we are told will soon be mined. The view from the top of all the surrounding land is spectacular and well worth the climb:

The next day the group split into two groups, with half travelling over to Kings' School Mukobela , while the other half remained on site for various activities.

They visited the farm, getting close to cattle...

 ...and seeing some of the new born calves.

                                   

Then they visited local homes on the compound. 

I was especially pleased to meet this man, called Bodwin, who had been one of our guards, when we lived on site in 2008.  Just before we left Zambia, his wife had a baby and I visited them at their home in the compound.  Praise, their young daughter is now almost three years old and the family is doing well: 

When we had completed our home visits I took my group to see the view from Bravo, our previous home, which is now occupied by the current farm manager and his family:

Being back on the farm is always a special time, when I remember the history of Christian Vision in Zambia since 1994, and the many lives that have been impacted by the work in that nation.

Painting at 'Pastor Sue's'

Firmly established on the itinerary for the annual Grace Academy Zambia trip, is painting at King's School, Mukobela, run by our friend, affectionately known as, Pastor Sue. 

Mukobela is a village, in the bush about an hour from Lusaka.  Sue set up Kings' School to provide good quality affordable education for the children from the area.  Starting with a pre-school class in her home, then building two classrooms, followed by another two classrooms, as those first children together with many more, graduated through the grades.



In 2006, she then started an ambitious project to building a secondary section, so that children could complete their schooling to Grade 12.  The building was completed in 2008 and Grace Academy students painted the long central hallway. A couple of weeks later the building was officially opened.

In 2009 GA students painted many of the classrooms off the hallway, and all of the classrooms were painted white.

Then in 2010 another group of GA students and staff, completed the classrooms and painted the pre-school, which was badly in need of a lick of paint.



This year, across two days, with half the group travelling across to Mukobela on each day, GA students repainted the central hallway, in bright yellow, more durable paint...



...and also painted a newly built teacher's house.





This house has been prepared for a Maths teacher from GA, who came on the 2010 trip and was so impacted by what he experienced that he decided to plan to come in 2011, when the UK school year ended.  Many of the students know him well, so painting his home in a variety of bright colours, and then leaving welcome notes around the walls for him and his new wife, made the painting task more enjoyable.



When we were there in July there was still much to be done: windows to be fitted and glazed, and not least, the outside bathroom to be finished!



In his photo Sue is explaining how the bathroom will function, with a long drop toilet and separate shower area.



By now, Chris and Suzzy will have arrived and be settling into their new home, together with a completely new lifestyle.

 They will cook mostly with charcoal and may use an iron filled with charcoal...

...and draw water from the village pump:

 The secondary school now has paint around the windows:



 ...Sue's office has brightly coloured curtains..

...and the staffroom is well used.

Other rooms look like this...

As with most of the building work at Kings', staff and students made these lecture chairs, with built in table.
This is the primary school, now with display boards on the walls:

All this looks fairly primitive, until you compare it with most of the surrounding housing....

...and the local transport is by ox cart!

Our visit to Kings' continues to be one of the highlights of the trip, as students and staff are amazed by Sue's vision and passion to improve the educational opportunities, and hence the long term prospects for rural Zambians.