Excursions

Jaipur City Tour

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Jaipur is the capital of Rajasthan and sits on a dry lake bed surrounded by barren hills at the top of which you can see fort-like edifices and the surrounding fort walls. The all day city tour bus with no A/C left from the railroad station and proceeded to take us to what seemed like every historical building possible in Jaipur!

The entry fees and camera fees for foreigners were many times over the fees for the locals and the soft drinks were four times the normal price which needless to say really pissed off Bob (he just wants to pay the fair and going price) which was ok with me because I am more interested in people than old empty buildings. (The two young college students on the tour from Bangladash were cheating by posing as Indians). An expensive elephant ride around a small courtyard was being utilized only by a few Japanese tourists. You had to pay an entrance fee to see the recently built white marble Hindu temple. Then you had to pay an offering inside the temple to see the inner temple. If you entered with a camera there was additional charge–quadruple for a video cam. Then you had to pay 5 rupees to go to the bathroom afterwards. You get nickel and dimed to death. Very frustrating.

For the remainder of the tour we stayed behind the rest when they toured the buildings and lingered in the streets to watch the kalaidoscope of passing shapes and colors…multi colored tribal women on the sidewalk selling soft green grass to passersby so they could gain graces by feeding the many cows that occupied the parking lot…15 little boys laughing and wanting to shake hands…one woman squatting in front of a wall to pee on a sidewalk…have a look in my shop…no charge for looking…barber shaving a patron in his pavement shop…men in white dhobis (like a sari that is pulled up between the legs) pushing handcarts and traditionally dressed Rajput men in bright colored turbans and handlebar moustaches. The newest and nicest building we saw in Jaipur is a three year old government building!

The tour guide makes his presentations in both Hindi and English (all the riders are Indian and Hindi-speaking except us) but only now and then do we catch a word and realize he is now speaking English! The two boys from Bangladash ask why we do not enter some of the palaces/temples. When I explain that we feel like human ATM machines, they sympathetically suggest that maybe the high prices for foreigners can be adjusted. I tell them we are more interested in the people anyway and they smile. The boys have completed two years of university study in Bangladash and have applied to study in the US. Moving to America seems to be every young Asian person’s dream but getting a visa these days, they say, is very difficult.

On the way to another ancient empty building we follow a rocking camel pulling a handcart piled high with 25 foot long metal pipe…the camel has only one speed and one direction…on this street we see many pavement dwellers-babies, naked toddlers, mothers…those not at home have their few belongings covered over with burlap or plastic..the driver lets us off several blocks from our hotel but instead of taking an auto-rickshaw or taxi we walk back to the hotel in the middle of the street along with the rest of the pedestrians thereby avoiding the urine soaked sidewalk…funny how quickly you can get used to this life if instead you are paying attention to the people…women beautiful with long shiny black oiled hair in colorful flowing saris that provide a foil to the grey dirty surroundings looking to see what is in their eyes… Never again, however, will I complain about the transportation taxes or the garbage, sewer and water bills at home unless at some future time I decide I like sewer water and garbage in my streets and a man carrying my new dishwasher up the hill on his back.

We drive through the famous “Pink City” which is the 250 year old part of the town. Doesn’t look pink to me…looks like a dirty rust color much like the mud huts in Africa or red clay kasbahs in Morocco…and don’t think it was repainted since the first time 250 years ago.

The bus transfers us into four wheel drives and up a winding road we go to the Amber Fort to view yet another palace and have lunch. I sit on a concrete wall alone for a few minutes to write in my journal and wait for the others to gather when I am quickly approached by about six laughing men in their 30’s or 40’s who shake my hand and want to know where I am from…then they traced a swooping convex shape in the air with their hands and arms and asked if I did this…what does that mean, I ask, and they all laugh and move away…not interested anymore. I tell Bob that I think I was just propositioned…

Pushkar India

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The driver has to ask 5 times for directions to Pushkar (no male pride here). Upon entering the village a guy sitting at a table lets down a red and white pole barrier and asks for a 15 rupee village tax. This is only for tourist cars…Bob says disgustedly that Oregon is really dumb.

In high season the ghats (steps or landing to the lake) will be full but this day there is hardly anyone at the ghats to bathe and obtain blessings in the holy water of Pushkar Lake-only a few young backpackers lounging at a refreshment table near the water. On the way back to the car we came upon two young men who were here from Delhi to take their engineer exams so they can qualify for a job on the railroad. Always the first question is “How do you like India”� Always I answer that I like India very much-especially the people. I beat them to the invariable next question: “Do you have children”� It is good in India to have sons.

Back to the road to Jaipur I see a sign advertising the “Pink Floyd Cafe Hotel…Wish You Wear Hear.” On the way out of the village there is a sign: “Thank’s.” We see men and women working on the road excavation in 100 degree heat loading gravel into the back of a truck using shallow pans carried on their heads…a man on a tractor with a hot pink turban…no speed limit and no cops on the road…hundreds of trucks waiting to load acres of marble…trucks all orange and painted with various designs…trucks are king of the road in India too…tribal woman with red over pink and orange over purple and flowered and multicolored and rings and big jewelry in their noses…we see STD everywhere but it stands for the State Telephone Department not Sexually Transmitted Disease.

The two lane Highway is being widened to four lanes with funds borrowed from the World Bank. But not in time for us with cars passing trucks honking that are passing trucks honking with motorcycles here and there honking on each side and in and out…camels pulling carts on the shoulders…at night vehicles use no lights honking…only for signaling an emergency like horns in the US. The last 12 miles are in the dark and by the time we get to Jaipur I am a frazzle…I have a headache from the diesel fumes…my ears hurt…no more road travel for me in the third world! And then I’ll be damned…after passing all those trucks…honking honking…the driver pulls over for tea!

Chittorgarh India

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On the way out of town the next morning, I am not surprised to see a dead cow that had been hit by a car. “The government will come and pick it up for the hide, (an hopefully not the meat) the taxi driver says, but the owner will be saying “where is my cow…”

Our travel options to the city of Jaipur is overnight sleeper bus, overnight sleeper train or taxi by day. Since we wanted to see the village of Pushkar and the countryside we opted for the taxi. Big mistake! National highway number 8 from Mumbai to Delhi is a narrow two lane road with bumper to bumper trucks with “please blow the horn” on the back of every truck; we know that India’s commerce is alive and well. Requirements for vehicle registration include good brakes, good horn and good luck. (Not necessarily in that order.)

It is Sunday and motorcyclists with women in beautiful saris sitting sideways on the back are traveling 50 miles to a Jain temple for a special festival. We see big shiny aluminum pots lined up on stoves in roadside stands. We stop for tea and see garbanzos, dried green peas and lentils soaking-waiting to be cooked for the day’s meal in the evening.

I had assumed that the brand new Indian-made car would have A/C but unfortunately it doesn’t and soon I am very irritable. I forsake tea for a watermelon flavored Fanta. We sit on plastic woven beds with rusted metal frames provided for people for their afternoon tea and rest. Children riding by on their bikes laugh and wave. We don’t know what to make of the staring adults and laughing children…

The road to Cittorgarh was on a flat plateau and we see the Fort, our first destination, high on a hill. The driver drives so fast through the town it is hard to see anything. Lonely Planet says the Fort epitomises the whole “romantic doomed ideal of Rajput chivalry.”

Three times the Fort was sacked, the last time by the Mughal emperor, Akbar, and on each occasion “jauhar” was declared in the face of impossible odds: the men donned the saffron robes of martyrdom and rode out from the the Fort to certain death, while the women and children immolated themselves on a huge funeral pyre-the second time a whopping 32,000 men and 13,000 women losing their lives. Apparently, honour was more important than life for these people. Today the Fort is a ruins but about 5000 people still live within it’s confines.

Mr. Singh’s Rickshaw In Udaipur

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We take the offer of Mr. Singh, the Sikh driver of an auto-rickshaw, a small, noisy, three-wheeled motorized contraption with no doors, to take us around the narrow streets that are filled with cows, people, dogs, pigs, men in dirty white dhotis (sarong which is pulled up between the legs) pushing handcarts, seller stands and motorcyles piled high with the entire family, other auto-rickshaws and cars that travel ridiculously fast, narrowly missing each other…trusting cows just lie down right in the middle of it all.

We go nuts taking pictures…Bob, over here, over here…in the local market with picture-perfect fruit and vegetables sold by tribal (adivasi) women sellers in colorful saris. The women laugh and put their hands to their mouths when they see themselves on the screen of the digital camera. Once in awhile, a woman will decline a picture and we respect her desire.

Mr. Singh tells us that the “higher cultured” women who have knowledge of the Indian religious texts (vedas) will want to follow the dictum of the sacred texts that say your image should not be reproduced. But the women loved having their pictures taken and I suspect the truth is that the tribal women have their own beliefs that may or may not include the texts of the vedas.

However, I was really touched by one middle class Indian tourist family from the state of Gujurat who handed me their year-old baby to hold-as if they they thought it would be a blessing for the child. Bob took a picture of the child and the father and as we walked away we heard a man calling us from behind. We looked around to see him running up the hill in his brown slacks and blue shirt. He wanted us to send him a copy of the picture so after a few more pictures of the whole family we copied down his address-we will have another pen pal.

Shilpgram Cooperative & Cultural Center
We were the only tourists in the center that has displays of traditional houses from the states of Rajasthan, Gujarat, Goa and Mahashtra. We pass by musicians and dancers that, bored to death, happily perform only for us and laugh when they see themselves on Bob’s video screen.

Monsoon Palace
For a breathtaking view of the entire valley, Mr. Singh’s rickshaw chugs up to the highest point in the foothills around the little valley to the Monsoon Palace built in the 1800’s by one of the Maharajas. The Palace is lit at night and from our hotel looks magical. But we don’t understand a word he says in his Indian accent as he describes the history of the palace!

Natraj Hotel Restaurant
For dinner Mr. Singh suggested we eat at the Natraj Hotel in the flat new part of the city. The word “new” is relative of course because it looks no different than the old city. The vegetarian restaurant full of men starved at the end of the work day serves a set-price thali (all you can eat) for 50 rupees or about $1.00.

Nine or ten barefoot waiters in dirty shirts and pants come around again and again with metal containers of potato masala, dahl (lentil soup), curd (yogurt), mattar paneer (peas and chunks of soft cheese in sauce), sabzi (curried vegetables), some other things I have forgotten or don�t know the name of, and chapatis and rice. The next day we are sick–the “GI’s” or locally known as the Delhi Delight.

Tea on the Hill at Sunset
As I am arranging to have some clothing repaired by old Mr. Basir Mohead at his tailor shop Mr. Singh happens along. We invite him to tea with us so we jump in his rickshaw and he takes us to the top of a quiet hill with a view of Lake Pachola where there are some picniking locals and a modest tea stall. While we drink our tea and are watch a soothing sunset, Mr. Singh remembers that the day before I had asked him where we could listen to some music and he offers to take us to his Sikh temple where a special pundit (chanter) that was booked a year in advance will be performing with tabla and drums.

Sikh Temple
At least 5 friendly greeters walk up and welcome us to the temple, give us little kerchiefs to cover our heads and take our shoes. Children stand around and stare and laugh-some attempting to walk up to us and talk but as soon as we make a move forward they pull back. The temple is jampacked, men on one side and women on the other, all sitting cross-legged knee to butt on the floor. I find a place in the back next to an older woman where I can lean up against the wall. I cannot get her to smile for the life of me. The music and voices were very soothing. I had hoped we could last until 11pm when about a thousand members of the temple would have a meal together that had been prepared earlier in the evening but between my loose stools and numb butt I decide at about 9:30 I have had enough and motion to Bob.

On the way out of the temple yard, Mr. Singh introduces us to his children, nieces and nephews who excitedly shake our hands and wish us goodbye. (The temple was full and many were listening to the music in the temple yard.) This close knit community has shared a very special evening with us.

Ghandi-India To So Africa

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In my last story, I mistakenly said that Gandi was born in South Africa. He was not. He was born in 1869 in Porbander in the Indian state of Gujarat where his father was chief minister.

He attended law school in London and since there were no opportunities at the time in India, he went to South Africa. The pictures on the wall of the museum in South Africa illustrate his experiences there including one when he was on his way to Maritzburg on the train where because of his color and race he was thrown out of his first class seat. This incident changed him for the course of his life.

He remained in South Africa for 10 years helping lay the foundation for the freedom struggle in the transvaal while at the same time developing his own framework for satyagraha (passive resistance). Ghandi returned to India from South Africa and lived at Mani Bhavan-the name of his home where he developed his ideals of Truth and Non-violence-and inspired his followers and devotees with a sense of service and sacrifice.

As Bob and I retrieved our shoes and walked down the hall to the door leading out into the street, I sense him following us, through the heat and dust. I turn around and ask “why are you trailing us from South Africa to India?” He is small, stooped over, tired but with sharp black all-seeing eyes. Then I hear Ghandi’s soft even voice: “I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.”

Migrants & Beggars In India

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Continuing our taxi tour with Asane, he takes us to a part of Mumbai where we will see many migrants and beggars…and the red light district.

As is happening all over the third world, migrants from rural areas make their way to urban areas hoping to better their lives. It almost never happens. Instead they squat on any little piece of ground they can find, even the road medians, and throw up tiny little huts made of found pieces of burlap and plastic. Soon, in desperation, the red light district sadly appears and now the city doesn�t know what to do with the people. Many become beggars.-many prostitutes.

Beggars
There is no developed government-sponsored social service system in India, however, the various religions all have societies (at least in large urban areas) that regularly give out money (additional rupees for each child) food and clothing, according to Asane the driver who is giving us a tour of the city. Women can make even more money by having 8-10-15 children who can all work the tourists so they are not interested in birth control. They do not want food-they want money.

There is a shortage of coins circulating in India because of the beggars so banks will buy the coins from the women and give them 10 rupees extra. But when Bob went to the Bank of India to get coins because businesses usually want as near to exact change as possible, he was told they could not make change for him. It�s mostly pretty little tribal women-usually very small, fine-boned migrants from the country with very bright colored saris who have learned to give those pitiful looks that become �professional� beggars. A trained girl of about four will follow you for about a block and a half (her neighborhood giving you �that look� and if she doesn�t score then will give up and turn back to her mother.

The local “CityInfo” tourist guide says not to give money but food instead so I try to keep food in my backpack. Mike, my son Greg�s friend who spent 5 months in India says just to give them the old �flick-of-the-wrist (get away) routine.

But the excellent novel about four people in India I am reading called “A Fine Balance” by Rohinton Mistry depicts a Beggarmaster who protects (owns) any pavement dweller who will pay him 100 rupees per week. For this the “beggar” gets protection from the police, freedom from the sweeps that will send them to the gravel pits and ditches, clothes, begging space, food and special things like bandages or crutches…” Lonely Planet says stories like this are common but many have no basis in fact. So who knows…probably every beggar has a different story.

When Bob asked Asane if he gives to beggars, he says he gives to real beggars like the old man with no legs or no arms who cannot work and has no other way to support himself. When asked what we should do about beggars, Asane said that when it comes down to it, it is a matter of each particular situation and what your heart says to do at that moment…probably wise counsel.

Asane’s Taxi Tour

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In Mumbai, we took a three-hour government sponsored tour in an Indian-made Ambassador car with “Indian A/C” which is a fan that sits on the dashboard. While we were waiting for Bob to run back to the hotel for the camera, Asane explained a bit about the Hindu ceremony (puja) that was taking place at a covered altar at the edge of the parking lot of the tour company a few feet away.

Asane is Catholic and he pays a fee for his children to go to school. His wife is a teacher but he says he forbids her to work because “who will stay home with the children?” Later he explained that his extended family (3 families) all live in housing joined together. I thought to myself that there was possibility here of shared child care but I did not ask.

I told Asane that I have practiced traditional meditation many years and then he wanted to know if I knew Rajneesh! Oh no, I said! But he was in my state, I said, and then asked him if the papers here made a big deal about the Rajneesh in India. Yes, he said, he was very rich and not a very good man and India ran him out of the country! Yes, I said, Oregon did too. Even though Rajneesh is dead, his ashes are kept at the Osho Commune International that is still doing a big business of running expensive meditation courses and New Age techniques about 4 hours away by train in Pone (Poona). Lonely Planet says that order to meditate at the commune you must fill out an application form, “prove HIV-negative by an on-the spot test and buy 3 swanky tunics…”

Open Air Laundry
Asane says we won’t see this anywhere else in the world! Mahalaxmi Dhobi Ghat is an open air laundry where some 5000 dhobi-wallahs use rows of troughs and giant concrete tubs of water that stretch as far as the eye can see to soak, scrub and beat the heck out of thousands of pieces of soiled clothes. The dhobi-wallahs pick up the clothes in the morning and at the end of the day deliver them on their handcarts to their owners. The laundry is over 100 years old and each dhobi-wallah owns his own business-renting his four foot by eight foot tub from the government that provides clean water every morning and that by evening is fllthy dirty.

Terrorism
We asked Asane whether he thought there would be war between Pakistan and Kashmir. He said “no, otherwise we are finish. After war we don’t have business!” Pakistan wants Kashmir, he says, because it is the most beautiful place in India and lots of tourists bring in a lot of money.

Then Bob asked him what he thought of America being in Afghanistan. He said that it was a good thing for America to be stopping terrorism everywhere-that small countries cannot defend themselves in the face of this kind of threat, although there was a scathing editorial against the “New Imperialism” and “Bellicose Bush” in the next day’s India Times newspaper. Asane asked Bob if people in America were afraid of more terrorism. Not surprisingly Bob and I gave opposite answers-he saying that everyone was very afraid and I said that people were going about their business as usual even though they knew there would be a good chance of another attack.

Jain Festival
Asane took us to a local festival at a Jain Temple. The Jains believe that only by achieving complete purity of the soul can one attain liberation and that fundamental to the right behavior is ahimsa (nonviolence) in thought and in deed. They are strict vegetarians; everyone in the temple wore a cloth mask when performing their pujas to avoid the risk of breathing in a bug or mosquito. I was particularly touched by a young boy of about 14 and his younger brother who was reverently bowing before the puja table wearing a Billabong T-shirt.

Sleepover In Soweto

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A Sleepover in Soweto-Africa’s largest township
On our way to India we stopped in Johannesburg for two days to stay with Lolo Mabitsela in her Bed and Breakfast in Soweto-a township about 30 minutes outside the city where most of the violence occurred in the years leading up to the end of apartheid. Lolo’s nephew who runs Jimi’s Face To Face Tours, picked us up at the Johannesburg airport in his van.

Soweto has always had a small and thriving middle class and after all the press about the violence before the end of apartheid they are anxious to get the message out.

About one million people live in the township that was designated for blacks and established in the early 1900’s. The community is still poor and more than half of its adults are unemployed. Roughly twenty percent live in one room tin and cardboard shacks. Lolo, a retired high school principal and school inspector, lives in middle class Diepkloof Extension, however, in a new two story brick faced multi bedroom/bathroom home that would sell for half a million dollars in California. A member of Parliament lives across the street.

Lolo raised several of her niece’s children and her one natural child is an attorney and works for the Justice Department. But she said that blacks didn’t have electricity and she never saw TV in a township until about 1982. She worked 35 years as a teacher and for that she only receives a $300 a month pension. This is because blacks didn’t pay into the pension fund because they were not going to be given pensions.

Lolo cooked us a feast of dumplings, oxtail stew, fried chicken, carrots, beets, salad and fruit. The cuisine includes other traditional treats such as mealie-pap, samp, spinach and ‘mabele’ porridge.

The next day she drove us to the largest hospital in the southern hemisphere where we walked through the pitiful emergency area with people inside and outside lying on gurneys. Most of the doctors are young white doctors from other countries eager for the experience they will gain here-especially with weekend knife and gunshot wounds.

The next morning she drove us to the beautiful Museum Africa housed in what used to be a fruit and vegetable market. One section dealt with the four and a half year trial of 156 people opposed to apartheid that were arrested in 1956. All, many of whom were white allies of the freedom fighters were eventually acquitted. Most of the defense were white and the trial was held in a Jewish Synagogue.

Another interesting section depicted the places and activities of Mahatma Gandhi who lived for a time in Johannesburg. His philosophy of “Satyagraha” or passive resistance was shaped by his 10 year resistance to black discrimination in South Africa.

Finally we drove out to Liliesleaf Farm where Mandela and about 10 other political activists were arrested during a resistance planning meeting. Apparently they had been given away by someone on the inside. The beautiful 29 acre farm and buildings now in an upscale Johannesburg suburb-far from Soweto-had been purchased with Communist Party funds for the use of the freedom fighters. It has been a guest house but recently was sold and will become a museum next year.

Back in Soweto we drove by Mandela and Winnie’s old house that has since been bombed, by Winnie’s new big beautiful home and Archbishop Tutu’s home (yes, he still lives in Soweto! Two Nobel Prize winners on the same street!

For dinner we stopped at a tavern owned by one of Lolo’s former students and had a wonderful supper of African delicacies-mielie pap (corn porridge picked up with the fingers and dipped into a gravy), lamb ribs in gravy, chicken, beet salad, lettuce salad, green mango chutney, cole slaw and I can’t remember what else.

I asked Lolo what happened between Mandela and Winnie. She said it was personal and had to do with the bedroom. But it is only speculation as to who was sabataging the relationship and for what reason. Mandela has since married the pretty widow of the President of Mozambique.

As a single divorced mom Lolo didn’t say how she was able to afford her home. The most curious thing though, was that there was not a single African-motif item in the entire house. A walk inside and you could have been in a quaint B&B in a western country…the new black rich…

Reflections on Africa
We loved Africa and feel sad to be leaving. But the one single strong impression is how little Africans everywhere we traveled, black and white, knew about the outside world and how few, even those who could afford to, had ever traveled out of their own countries. The news media is pathetic and our references to current people and events went clear over the heads of the people we talked to whether it was the sophisticated gay Afrikaner managers in the Waterkant office across the street or Lolo in Soweto.

Jimi, our driver who was born and raised in Soweto and who picked us up at the airport said that he didn’t know what poverty was until he made a trip to the Congo one year… “that was poverty,” he exclaimed! Ironic.

Jimmy’s Face to Face Tours arranges overnight stays with families in Soweto, including Lolo’s Guesthouse, for $52 a night per person, including breakfast and transportation to and from the township, at 8.15 rand to the dollar. Information: (27-11) 331-6109 or (27-11) 331-6132, http://www.face2face.co.za.

Lolo’s Guesthouse: Diepkloof Extension. lolosbb@mweb. co.za. Lolo Mabitsela charges about $50 a night for two, which includes dinner and breakfast. She can accommodate up to four and can be reached at 011 (27-11) 985-9183 or at 011 (27-82) 332-2460.

The Soweto page of Johannesburg’s Web site, http://www.joburg.org.za/soweto, has the most useful visitor information for the township. Gauteng Tourism Authority has regional info at http://www.guateng.net. You can also contact the Soweto Tourism Association’s Dumisani Ntshangase, 011-27-73-310-5886, or Zodwa Nyembe, 011-27-72-437-3944.

Hout Bay Township Tour

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Just outside Cape Town we visited a squatter’s camp where poor people including immigrants from Zimbabwe and Algeria, who were not allowed to live in Cape Town prior to apartheid, live on “no man’s land” and try to find fishing jobs on nearby Hout Bay.

The hillside facing the bay is covered with little tin and cardboard shacks that remind me of the worst of the migrant housing at home. We took a stroll up and down the narrow dirt lanes while Bob entertained the children with his digital camera-taking their pictures and then letting them see themselves on the video screen.

In one small shack some women were sewing some skirts and “aprons” (worn if you were married) so I bought an outfit and put it on. Idle people (unemployment is about 90%) gaped at the white woman with her cloddy athletic shoes and long black pants underneath their local African costume and laughed and shook their heads as I paraded past them. One woman in a “shabeen” (home where beer is made and sold) dipped some homemade beer out of an old keg into an empty gallon can from which we took turns drinking…

Table Mountain & District 6

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The geographical configuration of the city of Cape Town at the foot of Table Mountain is as beautiful as everyone has said it is. We took the cable car to the top of the mountain on a clear beautiful day. We rented a car and took a ride down to the Cape of Good Hope (Cape Town isn’t actually on the tip of the Cape) about 20 miles down the peninsula where Bob hiked up to the lighthouse to get a good view of the Atlantic on one side and the Indian Ocean on the other.

Music
The epic documentary by American Lee Hirsch, “Amandla! A Revolution in four Part Harmony,” had its first South African outing on June 16 at the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg. The film that earned two awards from the Sundance Film Festival describes the arc of the ANC’s resistance to apartheid from 1948 to the moment when Nelson Mandela dropped the first black vote into the ballot box in 1994 via the music that gave shape and direction to the war on apartheid. It has been entered for the US Academy awards. It will be showing in the States.

District Six
We visited the museum where a former Indian occupant expained that 60 to 70 thousand people-freed slaves, immigrants, labourers, merchants and artisans-used to live in the one and a half square km district spread along the flank of Table Mountain south of the center of Cape Town. In 1975 District Six was officially declared an area for white people only and bulldozed flat. All that remains now is a grassy area…but “they” had gotten rid of the Blacks, Colored and other undesirables that lived on the edge of the city…

The museum was established in 1992 to commemorate the destruction of the area and the sense of loss has been sensitively captured by the many artifacts donated by the ex-residents.

The Cannon is on Signal Hill right behind our apartment and is fired off every day at noon and makes your heart jump out of your skin. Started in the 1800’s we are told, when the English withdrew after the English/Boer War. They fire off the cannon 21 times at important times or when important dignitaries visit the city.