UW in Cape Town — September 16, 2017

Greetings…

Yet another interesting day – but peaceful and food filled.

Headed with the full group to !Kwan Ttu and then to Langenbaan – about an hour drive.. maybe 90 minutes..

!Kwa Ttu is a center for the preservation of the Koi and San people of South Africa. They’ve created a replica village (a bit touristy, but for a good cause). So, despite the fact that there are 11 official languages in South Africa, many other African languages have been lost and/or are not recognized. There are only 300 people remaining who speak some of these languages and now there are efforts to try to preserve them so they do not get lost completely. I don’t think I mentioned that all of these languages use “clicks” in their pronunciation and there are many different clicks you have to learn. Some are dental clicks, some are palate clicks, etc. Our students have been trying hard to reproduce the correct sounds and a few have become pretty good at it.

Anyway, at the entry of the center is an amazing tree that is inhabited by about 100 very interesting nests that house the yellow cape birds. In typical South Africa fashion, we had a time specific schedule for our tour of the San .. but the group before us came an hour late and had twice as many people as they registered, so our tour got delayed and we wound up doing a much shorter tour than expected. All good. By the way, they have this great system for the chickens… they actually lay their eggs in these file cabinet drawers that are open on one end (by the chicken patch) and the workers just open the drawer from the other side and get the eggs!

From there we drove to Strandloper – an outdoor, on the beach, restaurant that serves a 10-course seafood lunch served open-air, at the water’s edge, with a great view of Langebaan Lagoon. There’s live guitar music while you eat.. and the meal takes about four hours.. starting with mussels and ending with lobster (crayfish)…and includes fish curry, angel fish and snoek, grilled haarders, smoked angel fish, snoek with sweet and steamed potato, and more. We brought our own wine and soft drinks… It was great and delicious… except that I decided to take my shoes off and walk on the beach… and somehow I stubbed my little toe and I think I may have broken it.. It’s black and blue and pretty sore, but I put a bandaid on it.. and I’m sure I’ll live.  Everyone was really exhausted with several students asleep on the van for the entire drive home.

But Chris and Samu and I let the food settle in and then went out to La Boheme in Sea Point for an array of tapas.. including amazing steak tartare, salad, abogados made from ostrich meat, and pumpkin gnocchi… Then we were all ready to turn in

Tomorrow is another day. The days here are really getting shorter. I’ll be back in the office end of the week.. hard to believe. I’ve got a lot on my plate when I return.. so I’m already obsessing about deadlines and how to get things done.. I suppose my 34 hours of travel and flight time will provide good quiet work time for me to set up shop!

Best — Fern…