Flashback to Cape Town

We're going through and backing up our photos and discovered these oldies but goodies.
Camps Bay, Cape Town


Short story: Alisa lived in New Orleans and made a friend named Andrew. Andrew is living in London and we met him for a beer on our layover. He gave us the phone number of a South African friend, Dan, who he studied with at Cambridge. We met Dan and Dan's roommate Ari at a bar in Cape Town the first week we arrived. Four weeks later, while we were back in Cape Town, we went to lunch with one of the filmmakers that we met at Tessa's aunt's workshop. Her name is Gilli and she is from Johannesburg. She picked us up and started telling us how she had procured the car from a friend named Ari. Sure enough, it was the same Ari from the first week. Later that day we ended up at his house and strangled him. He is the kind of person who lends himself to being strangled.

Gilli got us on the Invite List to a Sneaker Party. Apparently sneaker culture is huge in the US. . .have you heard of it? Seriously, let us know.

One of our last days with Aunt Judy was spent going to Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela and other anti-apartheid activists were incarcerated. On the way, we stopped to dance to street music.

On the boat to Robben Island.


It was windy.


Nelson Mandela's cell.


This is the limestone quarry in which the prisoners worked. The reflection of the limestone was extremely bright and the prisoners were not allowed to wear sunglasses. Now many of the former prisoners have permanent eye damage. The cave in the corner served both as the break room where they ate their lunch and the toilet. It became one of the places where the prisoners could organize and share stories about the struggle. This is part of the reason why Robben Island came to be known as the "university" of the struggle.