You get a bunch of Asians going to black church and well there is a culture shock. We are (generally) clappers and well this service busted out in dancing choir several times during sermon.
Today is Sunday and the day we go to Church in Mbekweni. I am excited to go to the Harvester since I’ve heard so much about it from Danielle. When we get to Church, there were not many people there but everyone greeted us with warmly. Hugging, introducing themselves! The Church is basically one room as you walk in and I think there is a kitchen off to the side. Outside on the front of the Church says, Christian Community Centre and below that says Chris Hani Square.
Later I learn that Chris Hani was a political activist who fought the oppression and kept fighting until he was later assassinated. We are greeted by the Pastor who is also Luba’s father. Luba’s family speaks Xhosa which is the language with the clicks. This was very interesting and I found it difficult not to stare. I tried to be respectful.
We took a few group photos and as more people arrived we got our seats and the service slowly began. We sat towards the back more as we are used to and they urged us to move forward. We moved up to the second and third row and took up the whole row with our large group. There must have been some errors with the instruments because they started out without a microphone and you could tell others were trying to fix it. One tall girl who looked fairly young starts singing and her voice is strong and loud. I’m not standing far from her but her voice is just projected all around the room and she isn’t even using a microphone. There are two gentlemen who join in singing here and there. Then this older shorter lady walks in and just starts singing. She literally walked in to Church late but went straight to the front singing and leading the group.
Each song is lead by a different person and the words are repetitive so even if you don’t know the words, it isn’t difficult to catch on. So for instance maybe the lyrics are “blessed be your name” and they would repeat that over and over again.
Eventually they bring in a replacement keyboard and the microphones turn on and thats sort of when I couldn’t understand them anymore. Their voice was so loud that when it was going in the mic, it was muffled and hard to hear. When they would sing faster songs, everyone in the Church would be dancing. Everyone was dancing, children to adults. All of our group members mostly moved left and right and clapped our hands.There really wasn’t a message in the sermon. The typical Church sermon can go for hours, sometimes 4 and sometimes more. For ourschedules sake, they decided to do short messages and introduce Church members and give testimonies. Overall the message was about Love. Pastor’s wife prayed at the end and service was over. We were to make our way out to the van since we had to get to Cape Town but just leaving was difficult since everyone is talking to someone new and connecting and hugging.
We get in the van finally and waiting for the last few people to get in. I am sitting in the seat closest to the door with the van door open. Diane passes around cookies in the van so I grab one and take a few bites. Two young girls maybe around 15 yrs or so walk by and one girl points at my hand so I shake hers. She is saying something not in English and I give her high five. She still points at my hand so I give her my cookie that is in my hand and she takes it. She wanted the cookie. I’m thinking… but I ate that cookie I could have given her a new one. I feel bad and wish I could but by then she is gone.
The team finally meets and we head off to Cape Town. As we are driving, Blom points to the top of the mountain that doesn’t seem very far. She says that iridescent color that the water gives to the mountain is how Paarl got its name. Paarl is Pearl. What a beautiful name.
We get to Cape Town and do our souvenir shopping. We grab lunch in a really large restaurant that is also a hookah lounge. It was kind of strange and the way to the bathroom was a bit scary. It was like an old building that had a secret hallway for the bathroom. I’m sure it is not a secret hallway but thats what it looked like. We ate on the balcony because some of the team peeps were bothered by the smoke smell. It was another nice day, best spent outdoors. After lunch we go to the souvenir store which is where the team bought most of the souvenirs. Blom hooked us up with this place. Then we go out to what is similar to a swap meet or Saturday market. We split up for half an hour and buy whatever and meet back up to go to Table Mountain.
We get to Table Mountain and its around 4:45pm and their last trip up is 5pm and last trip down is 6pm. You go up by Cable Car and the top is supposedly flat. We are in CapeTown which is right next to the Ocean. It was pretty windy and sort of cloudy. The visibility is none they say which is the whole purpose of going up there.
Table Mountain is such a wonderful attraction that it is available to be voted to be one of the seven wonders of the world. I don’t really get this since there are already 7 so I don’t know which would get bumped out???
Regardless of visibility we go up since this is really a once in a lifetime opportunity. I’m scared of heights and it was really scary because the cables that carry you up does not seem sturdy in my opinion, just looking at it. The ride up is also very steep. As we get on, there are lots of people on the cable. The cable fits maybe 50 people maybe more. Inside it rotates so you get the whole view as you are going up. It wasn’t scary actually riding up. The whole cable car is enclosed which made it feel better as well. It was beautiful on the way up you don’t really think about how scary it is, you just take pictures.
For those who are too scared to go up or fit, you can hike/bike up and down. I think its like 2 hours if you really bust your tush up and about an hour coming down. So we go up and as we get out, its really just a rock that is for the most part flat, There is a path so you go all around on this path and there are lots of opportunities to take photographs. The visibility was bad on one side but the other side was great. We went around the whole thing and took a gazillion photos. We even saw a little creature that I am guessing is like a groundhog or hedgehog or something??? I don’t know.
At around 5:30pm this loud bell turns on. It sounds like what I hear in the movies in prisons when the prisoners are to go back to their room or something. It was loud. I started to run because there was no way I was going to hike down. If you miss the last car then that is your only way down. One cool thing was from the top you could see over Cape Town and Robbin Island (Where Nelson Mandela served 18 years of his prison sentence).
After the visit to Table Top Mountain, we went to a special tapas restaurant called Gold’s Restaurant. The food and entertainment was awesome. They had drumming circle and lessons, lots of singing of course and as usual the wine.
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