Volunteering in Cape Town November 24th, 2009
We overslept and the thought of hiking up Table Mountain seemed to be a no go, but after breakfast in bed at one of the Cape Town, South Africa hotels, invigorated us and we decided to take on our trip to a winery that one of the other hotel guests told us about. All they had to do was mention that the winery serves chocolate with the tasting and we were already there in our heads.
We had to go through an estate to get to the winery, that was unexpected and delightful all at the same time. The wines were all good and the chocolates were a nice change to sometimes a monotonous sipping of wines. The estate was beautiful and Mediterranean. It was way off the beaten path that we had to take a dirt road to get there. It made us feel like we were far removed from civilization, but in actuality, it only took us 25 minutes to get to the airport.
We had to drop off one of our fellow travelers at the airport. We then found our way to a new acquaintance’s apartment. He had an unbelievable view of the city and of Table Mountain. Actually, he had this view from every room of his apartment! This made me think that my ‘one of a kind’ view from my apartment in New York City wasn’t a ‘one of a kind’ view. Our new found friend takes us to a township where he visited the Philani clinic and employment project. Local women are employed and get to doing weaving while their children, who have the effected bodies of malnutrition, are treated and schooled.
It was shocking to see the level of disparity between the downtown and the townships. We felt like our new found friend wanted us to know just how fortunate we were (which we never doubted). We ended up buying several woven pieces, place mats and bags and when purchased tons of water and donated it to the clinic. We really enjoyed playing with all the children. They are so innocent and their love was genuine. We hated leaving the place, but has our new found friend told us, we don’t belong there. We’re tourist, but if we were locals, he’d be happy to make us volunteer. He took us back to his apartment and he cooked us dinner and we ended up going to a club. But, somehow, clubbing it in Cape Town just didn’t feel right.
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