A Cape Town Day

I didn't see any!

Sometimes one gets far more than one seeks. And in Cape Town this is often true. Take for example the morning traffic jam up Paradise Road, Newlands. There the mountain looms close overhead, every detail etched by the morning sun. It beats Los Angeles or London, doesn't it? So last Friday, there I was having breakfast, preparing to spend the morning writing, when I heard on the radio that there were dolphins chasing fish in Simonstown harbour.
This might happen quite frequently but us landlubbers in Plumstead don't always know about it. I thought I'd go and have a look.
When I got there, I couldn't see anything out at sea, but it was a

glorious day so I wandered. There was a sign saying Mosque, uphill from the Main Road. In the paving of the lane, there was a motif, looking like something one might find in Glasgow by Charles Rennie Mackintosh. As I walked up, I saw that the design was picked up in the stained glass windows of the building at the top - an Art Deco mosque! Built in 1911, with the minaret added in 1925. A shopkeeper told me that the Heritage museum was interesting. This was in a house called Amlay and the signs said 'closed on Friday'. But I could hear someone in the garden so I asked him if it really was closed, because the front door behind the security gate was open. He said "Try ringing the bell." So I did. After a short while a woman came to the door.
I said I saw that the museum wasn't open but the gardener had suggested I ring. She said I'm very busy with washing but if you're a South African and you know about forced removals, you can come in and have a look around by yourself. This very down-to-earth museum curator was Patty Davidson who lives upstairs in what was once her family home before Simonstown was declared a white area in 1967 and the family was forced to move. On the ground floor she has created a folk museum of Cape Town Muslim life. It is packed full of photographs and relics from the homes of  people who apartheid classified as Cape Malays but whose ancestors seldom originated in Malaysia. Mostly these artefacts come from the more than 7000 who were forcibly removed from Simonstown, but Patty told me later that on her opening day in 1999, the museum had 1200 visitors! - I'm sure that many people from all over Cape Town wanted to play a role in and be a part of this unique enterprise. I didn't have much time so I only saw the kitchen/dining room, the magnificent bedroom and a lovely front room dedicated to religious matters and the Haj. Because I had virtually travelled with a friend of mine when she went on the pilgrimage I was interested to see old photographs of the early days when everyone went by boat, the kind of gear people wore, a postcard from Mecca dated 1903 etc. Later Patty came to chat and I asked her about what had happened to the fez because I remember all the men wearing them in funeral processions when I was a child. It is such an interesting story. In the late 19th Century, there was a dispute between the 2 Sunni sects in the Cape and the religious leaders asked for mediation. At that time the Ottoman Empire was the great Islamic power and they sent Abu Bakr Effendi to Cape Town and he arrived with a crate of Turkish fezes. I guess there were enough to go around for quite a while and then sometime in the 40's they ran out. She said that later it became fashionable to put a tassle on if one had been on Haj.

Simonstown Heritage Museum - Amlay House 1858

Patty is so knowledgeable and has so many stories to tell - if you're a South African, do go when you can - it's one of our national treasures and you won't regret it. I'm going to go back on an open day!