Log: South Africa

Last weekend, Marc and I visited the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa to view two new expositions that have opened up during the spring. The Zeitz is an impressive towering structure, a museum housed in an old industrial silo by the harbor. Every time I visit the museum, I am reminded of the special beauty that can be found within a repurposed space, and of all that there is to learn and experience within the museum's thick concrete walls.

This final visit was particularly meaningful, not just because our time in South Africa is drawing to a close, but also because I encountered the paintings of Gerard Sekoto and the poetry of Don Mattera for the very first time. Named after one of Mattera's poems, the exhibition "A Protea is Not a Flower" puts a spotlight on South African modernism and exile brought on by apartheid in the 20th century. In fact, Sekoto and Mattera are prominent names within South African art history, and I feel grateful that I will not leave Cape Town without experiencing their work.

Seeing paintings like "Yellow Houses in Sophiatown" and reading poems like "Fallen Fruit" elicited feelings not unlike those that I have felt when I saw the films of Satyajit Ray and Wong Kar Wai for the first time. Or when I stood on a beach of black sand for the first time. Like a first taste of pistachio gelato, a first reading of Jane Eyre. Awakenings that pull at the heart.

- Andrea

One of the benefits of reading widely and constantly is that the opportunities for enlightening coincidences multiply. A line from Rubem Braga's "O Motorista 8-100" suddenly echoes with the writing of Camus. I listen to a lecture on Jane Austen's personal letters and think of Banu Mushtaq's short stories. I write about an encounter with a dying bird on the sidewalk, I read Caetano W. Galindo's Lia and encounter a scene in which the protagonist, Lia, encounters a dead bird on the sidewalk. Nothing is original, but everything is. This does not discourage me. Ideas repeat, but never exactly in the same way. It testifies to the common experiences that bind living beings together, and it also speaks to individualities that are irreplaceable.

- Andrea

The white "tablecloth", fluffy and wispy, has draped itself over the grey rocky peaks around which this city has carved its roads, villas, shacks, churches and mosques. The sun shines down on the thick frondy palms that peek above the white walls of Dutch-style colonial structures and Art Deco-inspired apartment blocks. Greens, reds, and whites are what I can see from the window I have borrowed.

How have I made it here? So far from home, to such a beautifully rugged place which, just like home, is bursting at the seams with life and death, cruelty and kindness, opportunity and injustice.

Effervescent have been the first three weeks I have spent on the African continent. Cape Town is everything Marc has described to me over the years, yearning to return. To the sea, the mountains, the trees, the languages, the cultures, the art. It is like being a child again. The bird is not quite a bird as I have known it. It sings songs up to now unknown to me as the day rises and the call to prayer rings from a nearby mosque.

I am grateful, but do not know what to thank beyond those who have cared for me up to now. Am I deserving, worthy of being fortunate? It is a pathetic question, isn't it? In Cape Town, like in Bogotá, the face of the mountain itself appears stained by the pervasive shadow of violence and inequity. Cities like ours demand you pay attention. You are not allowed to avert your gaze.

Earlier this summer-winter, when I was in New York City, a friend told me she wanted to stop feeling guilty for living. To live. I have wanted so much to be able to live without fear. To move freely. To learn everything I possible can. To take care of others. Have I now traded fear for guilt? And what good does guilt do?

- Andrea