In Search Of ...

Meandering … an honorable pastime. Meandering in Cape Town … a pleasurable pastime! We began the day with two goals: breakfast in one of our favorite spots – then find a birding location for our favorite in-laws.


Goal one is a little café in Blaubergstrand. You might want to translate that as the beach of the blue mountain. Betsy is watching a family meandering over the shoreline rocks in search of tiny fish. The blue mountain, Table Mountain, is in the background. Our breakfast was terrific.





Goal two sent us to locations on the other side of the blue mountain. We didn’t know exactly where we were going – just a general idea. Our first stop was a good-sized, as it turned out, dog-walking park named Island Park. Winter in Cape Town is the time for many of the bushes to bloom. Betsy is standing beside an eight-foot tall shrub covered with little white blossoms. Stunning!







Yellow blooms covered other shrubs and there were Calla Lilies everywhere.







We finally spotted some (significant) birds. There were any number of coots cruising around and a few pelicans. I get a kick out of the fake red eyes on the coots. They’re actually deemed attractive by females during the breeding season.



















The area seems much like we we’ve seen along the waterways in Florida, only on a smaller scale. The boats tied up at the docks tended to be canoes instead of yachts.








Other neat stuff that we spotted on Park Island included a Pelargonium (Geranium) that only my brother Marshal would recognize,









and a Weaver Bird nest under construction. A finished product was nearby.










We had come out to this specific location because of a rumor of a pod of resident hippos. When we asked a dog-walking couple about them, they said we were in the wrong place and that we should backtrack down the main road a bit to a location called Rondevlei (Ron-de-flea). So, off we went.






This was a real park, admission fees, brochures, toilets, museum, the works. The trails were over four feet wide and covered with a heavy-duty rubberized mat. There were occasional breaks in the matting – round in shape with a pattern on one side which looked a lot like animal toes. Never any more than three or four in a row – it looked like a hippo might have used the path for short distances between grassy areas. This realization brought some degree of discomfort, particularly when we saw the Hippo Crossing sign and the path through the rushes.


Rondevlei has two observation towers from which you can see the bird hides and locate the large gatherings of waterfowl. We did not see the pod of hippos, so we set off down the trail.


Along the way we found some interesting flora. This plant is one whose flowers are pollinated by rodents. I rather suspect that it is not native to the area but belongs several hundred kilometers to the North.






We did find some birds including this group of Sacred Ibis.









However, the find of the day came as we sat for a minute at the end of the trail. This little critter, a mongoose, seemed to be scouting for a meal. Perhaps a cobra?








So, did we find what we were searching for? Hard to tell. We had a great time – took a nice long walk in the fresh air – found some beautiful flowers – saw some interesting birds – met Riki-Tik-Tavi. I’d have to say that, yes; we found what we were looking for.

Peace,
Floyd

Christmas for the Homeless, 2009

A southeaster was blowing moving the clouds across the sky like horses galloping in the field, pushing all Cape Town's debris on the wind. The “Cape Doctor” had arrived. Gritty sand stung faces and sand blasted eyelids. Aloes leaned on their stalks, quiver trees quivered and the birds huddled in crevices, just trying to keep from being blown away. The wind had been howling for two days.

It was almost noon on the second Sunday in December, the day Central Methodist Mission was going to have a Christmas dinner for the homeless right on Church (Kerk) Street, a brick thoroughfare between buildings, usually home to cafes and street sellers. Previously, the dinner had been held in the Church Street church hall, but the hall only holds 85 people and each year 40 or so more people were fed dinner downstairs by the outside door. So each year, there were ever-growing numbers of people physically fighting for their chance to get in the door because everyone was worried there wouldn't be enough food for them. It was becoming dangerous for them and for us.



So there we were, battling the wind with paper tablecloths stapled to the tables, not daring to put soda into paper cups, working feverishly in the kitchen, waiting for the guests to arrive. We were ready to go.






Despite the wind, we were all very happy. The African Image Cafe (see rooster in above picture) let us use their kitchen to serve from which meant we could move the food from the counter on trays directly out into the street, not up/down a long flight of stairs as had been done previously.



And because of the ever-increasing number of homeless that the church members feed on the street each Sunday, the decision had been made to provide for 200 people.

The guests had started to arrive early, some watching us from 9 am on as we set up the rental tables and chairs. Others showed up at the last minute, but all wanted Christmas dinner: a chicken leg and thigh; spaghetti; a piece of corned beef; rice; beetroot; and tomato, onion and pepper salad, with malva pudding, ice cream and peaches for dessert; a feast. And of course, there were “cool drinks.”




It was time. The CMM team sprang into action. The guests were seated. After prayers, they ate; young, old, families with children, and some men and women who had been on their own for years.








Some we recognized from talking with them each week on the street; others were new, but all were grateful for the chance to sit down and enjoy to a real meal with family and and friends.









There were 210 guests in all.










As they left the adults were given a gift bag containing a toothbrush, toothpaste, washcloth, soap, a banana or apple (depending on whether or not they had their front teeth) and a bit of candy. The children got fruit and sweets.







Sarah, please say thank you to all the members of the Mission Committee at Southminster for helping to provide the monies for the meat, the soap and the washcloths. All was appreciated. Without your help we would not have been able to be so generous.





Each year Floyd and I look forward to this event because in our small way we want to support those who have been helping the homeless in Cape Town each week for the last 22 years. Thank you for supporting our efforts.

Cape Town Winter 2009

Greetings from Cape Town,

Way back in 2006 we experienced a series of fires on Table Mountain. The flames came dangerously close to homes. Ashes drifted through the air, starting other fires and creating a huge mess. Helicopters roared during the daylight hours dumping water onto hotspots. The devastation was incredible with acres of burned trees and plants, dead animals, and homeless birds.


Yet there was hope. Fire causes the release of seeds from the Protea family of plants and is a natural event in the fynbos (fine bush) ecosystem. I have a photo of a seed whose structure is simply incredible – looking like an umbrella, obviously evolved to take flight and soar to another, hopefully receptive, location. The flowers that next spring were incredible.

We took the dogs on a walk through that area this morning. The pines that had been scorched had died and most had fallen in the winds. Pines are not indigenous to the area. They were initially planted by the early white colonizers to provide masts for the sailing ships. So, it is ok that they are going.


As we looked up past the cable car station to the top of Table Mountain, we could see a few remaining pines and acres of what looked like scrub brush. Yes, there were some tiny white and yellow flowers, but you really needed to look closely to see anything else.





Looking closely soon became the name of the game as our dog walk was interrupted time and again with the call “Look at this!” “This” included the sugarbirds with their long tails and curved beaks, adapted for dipping deeply into the protea flowers. Also blooming were the tiny white flowers of the oxalis, several varieties of Erica (heathers), and a yellow daisy-like flower on a small shrub.


But the most striking flowers were the protea. (The genus Protea was named in 1735 by Carolus Linnaeus after the Greek god Proteus who could change his form at will, because proteas have such different forms.) They also bloom at different times of the year. The pictures I am including are only a few varieties of the winter bloomers. We have yet to get to the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden to see some of the other, even more spectacular varieties.
























Very few of these plants are more than two feet tall – they’ve only been growing for a few years – yet they are already demonstrating the amazing diversity present within the Cape Floral Kingdom.

The spring bulbs and iris-family plants are not on show yet but their green leaves are present and promising quite a display in August. More on that later, obviously.

Floyd

Cape Town Christmas Dinner

January 12, 2009

Dear Friends and Family:

Many of you know that one of the missions of our church here in Cape Town is to feed the homeless on the street each Sunday. From Monday through Saturday most homeless can beg monies from the tourists and are fed at a few low cost feeding facilities, but on Sunday most of the shops close down and there is no place for them to go. Our friend John started this food ministry 33 years ago, then feeding 15 people each week. This last Sunday, we fed over 160 people, literally on the street: a cup of soup, a sandwich, and apples; for them a very good meal. This food is brought in by individuals in the church who want to help. And they have been doing it each week for over 25 years, a monumental effort in a society where the average wage is still
approximately R2500 per month ($250). Each week, our small part is to provide soup or fruit as needed and to go out on the street, into the parks and sometimes under the bridges of Cape Town to distribute the food.


When Floyd and I arrived here in December, the ladies of the church were preparing to feed the homeless a Christmas dinner. Thanks to a donation of $200 from Southminster Presbyterian, our Glen Ellyn church, the ladies were able to purchase the meat for the meal, plus some “goodies” for each of the homeless to take with them: a toothbrush, toothpaste, washcloth, soap, tinned meat, and a bit of candy.



The picture on the right shows the Women’s Circle putting together the “goodie” bags. Note the tinned meat in the foreground, a special treat.







120 homeless were invited to the dinner. Since we could only squeeze 85 chairs into the small room in the church office building, not all were actually able to sit at a table or even in the same room. Some had to be fed on the street and in the corridors. This always presents a problem. We fill the back row of seats first, no tables, against the wall with their food in the window sills, then the farthest seat at the table, and the next, and so on, with no spaces because once you are in, there is no room to get out.


That was the scene at the top of the stairs: quiet, orderly, peaceful. It was an entirely different story at the front door. We were collecting invitations and sending groups of ten at a time up the stairs. That went reasonably well until the upper room approached capacity. The remaining crowd began to sense they might not get food (which wasn’t true) and desperation settled onto the people. They began to surge through the glass doors and onto the stairs. Five of us tried to physically restrain them but the wave of silent humanity continued. Floyd relates fearing someone would be trampled and is not sure how or why the push ended but somehow it did. Not many of us have ever been that desperate – it brought a new dimension to hunger.


The food was beautiful. The ladies did a spectacular job. Chicken is the meat of choice in Africa, and there was some chicken, a thin slice each of beef and ham, potato, spaghetti, curried rice, and for the veggie, beetroot. For dessert, there was malva pudding and ice cream. This is a typical South African Christmas dinner. We were so thankful to be able to give them dinner size plates of food. Last year there was only enough for small bowls.




Even those that had to eat outside enjoyed the feast. Hopefully next year we will actually be able to get the permits needed to put tables and chairs outside on the Square where there is more room. All would then be able to sit together.






There were a lot of very happy people that day, grateful to be remembered. Again thanks to our friends at Southminster and to my sister Sue for her support in helping to fund this effort. Have a great 2009.





One additional anecdote related to our mission that day. A film crew was shooting scenes involving Formula 1 cars on the street ½ block away. One of those involved witnessed our efforts to help the hungry. She was so touched that she went to the rest of the film crew, collected money, and brought it to us to help future efforts. It brought tears to our eyes and joy to our hearts.


Love to all,
Betsy

Stone Age Tool Find

Acheulean is the name given to an archaeological industry of stone tool manufacture associated with prehistoric hominins during the Lower Paleolithic era across Africa and much of West Asia and Europe. Acheulean tools are typically found with Homo erectus remains.


I picked this particular handaxe up on a public beach in Cape Town. One of the local experts said that the find had no particular scientific value because the origin of the artifact could never be determined. So, it will make a nice paperweight. The length is approximately 18cm and the handaxe is water-worn and smooth.

It was the dominant technology for the vast majority of human history and more than one million years ago it was Acheulean tool users who left Africa to first successfully colonize Eurasia. Their distinctive oval and pear-shaped handaxes have been found over a wide area and some examples attained a very high level of sophistication suggesting that the roots of human art, economy and social organization arose as a result of their development. Although it developed in Africa, the industry is named after the type site of Saint Acheul, now a suburb of Amiens in northern France, where some of the first examples were identified in the nineteenth century.

The Lower Paleolithic is the earliest subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. It spans the time from around 2.5 million years ago when the first evidence of craft and use of stone tools by hominids appears in the current archaeological record, until around 100,000 years ago when important evolutionary and technological changes (behavioral modernity) ushered in the Middle Paleolithic.

Early species

The earliest hominids, known as australopithecines (personified by the famous find of Lucy by Don Johansen in Ethiopia) were not advanced stone tool users and were likely to have been common prey for larger animals. Sometime before 3 million years ago the first fossils that may be called Homo appear in the archaeological record. They may have evolved from the australopithecines or come from another phylogenetic branch of the primates.

Homo habilis remains, such as those from Olduvai Gorge, are much more recognizable as humans. Stone-tool use was developed by these people around 2.5 million years ago before they were replaced by Homo erectus about 1.5 million years ago. Members of Homo habilis used Olduwan tools and had learned to control fire to support the hunter-gatherer method of subsistence.


Use

Use-wear analysis on Acheulean tools suggests there was generally no specialization in the different types created and that they were multi-use implements. Functions included hacking wood from a tree, cutting animal carcasses as well as scraping and cutting hides when necessary. Some tools may have been better suited to digging roots or butchering animals than others however.

Alternative theories include a use for ovate hand-axes as a kind of hunting discus to be hurled at prey. Puzzlingly, there are also examples of sites where hundreds of hand-axes, many impractically large and also apparently unused, have been found in close association together. Sites such as Melka Kunturé in Ethiopia, Olorgesailie in Kenya, Isimila in Tanzania and Kalambo Falls in Zambia have produced evidence that suggests Acheulean hand-axes may not always have had a functional purpose.

Recently, it has been suggested that the Acheulean tool users adopted the handaxe as a social artifact, meaning that it embodied something beyond its function of a butchery or wood cutting tool. Knowing how to create and use these tools would have been a valuable skill and the more elaborate ones suggest that they played a role in their owners' identity and their interactions with others. This would help explain the apparent over-sophistication of some examples which may represent a "historically accrued social significance".

One theory goes further and suggests that some special hand-axes were made and displayed by males in search of mate, using a large, well-made hand-axe to demonstrate that they possessed sufficient strength and skill to pass on to their offspring. Once they had attracted a female at a group gathering, it is suggested that they would discard their axes, perhaps explaining why so many are found together.

** Most of this text was extracted from www.wikipedia.org where more information may be found.

Safe Arrival - Cape Town, South Africa - Dec 1, 2008

And the good news is … THERE IS NO BAD NEWS! We arrived EARLY, all of our luggage arrived WITH us, we SLEPT on the flight over.








Becky greeted us with the news that their fish store had SMS’d (text messaged) her with a tuna special. To put this in perspective, sashimi–grade tuna goes for ~$20 a pound in our area when you can get it. With the current exchange rate over 10 Rand to the Dollar and 2.2 pounds to the kilogram, that works out to less than $3 a pound.










We dropped our luggage off at the flat and headed over for some great wine and wonderful sushi. As we pulled up to their home, we were greeted by a group of carolers. We enjoyed their songs, thanked them and headed in.





We are a bit tired, but not so much that we can’t enjoy the scenery here in Cape Town. Did I mention that it is around 75 degrees? More later as things get rolling. For now, we need to restock the refrigerator and get other essentials tended to. Best to all.







Floyd

Reflections from Cape Town

Greetings from Cape Town

The weather in Cape Town has been unseasonably wet the last two days. You can walk around if you don’t mind getting a bit damp, but at least it’s cooler than the previous few days. The thermometer climbed into the low 90’s and today’s 70’s feels great – and the plants love it.

I took advantage of the down time to rummage through some of my photos and meditate a bit. I got up the other morning in time to take a sunrise picture over Devil’s Peak. You can see two of the local birds (cranes) at rest on the horizon.








The early sun reflecting off the glass in a downtown building.









As I looked around that morning I noticed the reflection of our building, and our flat, in a nearby building. I was struck with its similarity to structures I had seen many years ago in Chaco Canyon – the pueblos of the Anasazi.






As I continued to look around, the outline of Table Mountain and its cable car station appeared as a reflection in the windows of the building across from us. As I view the same scene today, the mountain is hidden by a layer of fog/cloud.

There’s something philosophical, perhaps theological, here: reality, reflected reality, and hidden reality.





Speaking of hidden, here’s today’s view across Table Bay; a bit of fog making navigation tricky.







While I’m in this introspective mood, I have a question for you. Did you vote in the primaries? This is a picture of the South African people queued up in 1994 to vote for the first time. It took four days to complete the voting because there were so many who wanted to vote. BTW, there were no incidents.

It is a privilege to vote. Don’t ever forget that. Betsy and I spent the better part of this morning with a gentleman who lived through many of the difficult days and years prior to that April 1994 event. He spoke about the role of the churches, the police, the government – incredibly emotional. I can only pray that the US government turns away from any similar, heavy-handed tactics.

Floyd