South Africa: Day 1 - Cooking before Theater

South Africa! What a beautiful country, a shining gem in the continent that has been absolutely incredible already. This was the first port on the itinerary that I dragged myself out of bed to watch the sunrise for. It was pitch black when we walked out onto the deck in the morning. The sky brightened as the sun approached, the iconic table mountain was silhouetted against the sky. Cape Town greeted us that morning with an absolutely unforgettable sunrise.

Getting off the ship later that morning, I set off on a SAS trip to the township of Guguleta for a cultural introduction to the X'hosa people (pronounced: tongue click - "hosa") through the universal language of food. The township itself was one of many set up throughout the country as a result of the period of government mandated  racial segregation known as apartheid. Driving along the highway to our destination we passed other townships along the way consisting of shacks made up of not much more that corrugated metal and wooden beams, which themselves were a large improvement over the undersized tents that used to populate the townships. Our temporary home of guguleta has come extremely far since the days of apartheid, it now resembles an American suburb much more closely than it does a shanty town. For our time there, we split into groups of four and followed our Mamas (township matriarchs) to their respective houses.

On the menu for today was chicken, and I don't mean chicken breast or drumsticks. I mean a live chicken we butchered in the bathroom before plucking its feathers and cleaning it. Afterwards we performed exploratory surgery on the animal, removing its intestines, heart, liver and other various organs in addition to discovering a fully formed egg inside. We then through it all into a large pot (unborn egg and all) and let it cook with vegetables and spices. Meanwhile while we let that mixture stew, our Mama had prepared a dough of flour, salt, sugar and yeast which we rolled up into balls and fried to make "Fat Cakes", awesome little African doughnuts often served with Rooibos tea.

Back to the stew we were making,  about halfway through the cooking time our Mama took all of the aforementioned nasty bits out and placed them on a plate, which I presumed was for the trash or used to make broth later. Imagine my surprise when she threw on a little  seasoning and set them down for us to enjoy. I didn’t come half way around the world to be squeamish so I, hesitantly, dug in. Mama Ningwesa (completely misspelled I am sure) was extremely surprised to hear that none of us had tried any of these before and remarked "If you don't know these then you don't know anything."

In case you were wondering what each were like, I am happy to report that they all tasted like chicken, and were not too bad to tell the truth. The gizzard and heart were the best as they had a fairly normal texture. The intestines were rubbery and the liver was like a gritty paste, neither of which I find very appealing. When all was said and done our Mama dished out the meal of chicken, carrots , cabbage and pap that we had seen go from the farm to the plate and we enjoyed a meal together before our group left the township in the late afternoon.

After I made it back to the ship, I changed quickly into some nicer clothes then ran back outside to hop a bus to the Cape Town Artscape Theater. Our guide for the evening was the Drama theater on board the ship, it also just so happens that his day job is the Managing director of the Cape Town Opera in that very theater. Once arriving we split into two groups, with one following him and the rest (including me) following the pit orchestra's conductor through the backstage area where we met the cast, crew and director. He showed us some of the behind the scenes magic they use including a large see-saw type rig that provides the illusion that one cast member was floating during a certain scene in the play. He explained how the Cape Town theatre was unique in it's "Cross" design which means that attached to the central, visible main stage were spaces to the left, right and behind that were the same size as the main stage. This allows them to store entire sets on either of the three hidden stage spaces and completely transform the stage very quickly. 

After the tour we congregated in an area sectioned off from the main lobby and participated in a wine and cheese tasting before milling into the theater to watch a Performance of "The Fiddler on the Roof"  15th row back in the center. Needless to say, and it might seem a little redundant after all of these blog posts, but it was an incredible day. Both opportunities were something I would have been hard pressed to find traveling independently and something that really helped to flesh out South Africa  as a place instead of the "tourist  destination that used to have apartheid" vision that I along with most people had going in. It was  a day of complete contrast as well, a day in which I saw two completely different sides of the same city. A city that is still progressing towards the rainbow nation that it aspires to be.