a night on table mountain

It's easy to see why people who come to Cape Town are almost always enamored with it. The city's palm-lined boulevards, vibey shops situated amongst beautiful colonial architecture, and colorful blend of people from all over the world lie right up against the slopes of Table Mountain, which stands like a majestic rocky guardian looking over its inhabitants. Of course you can over-romanticize a place--in addition to being beautiful Cape Town is a place of intense contrasts, and was one of the focal points for the decades-long struggle of black South Africans against the apartheid regime.

This weekend we had an opportunity to experience Cape Town from multiple angles at the same time, when we spent the night on top of Table Mountain with Beyond Expectations Environmental Project (BEEP). BEEP is an ogranization that an amazing man named Lindela started with several friends as an outreach to children in the shanty towns around Cape Town. Long story short, during Apartheid the shanties were places where dislocated and oppressed blacks were placed so that they could be controlled and kept out of sight by/from the Cape Town elite. Unsurprisngly, these places have continued to exist as zones of concentrated poverty and social disfunction, brought about by the crushing burdens of dislocation, discrimation, and poverty. Lindela caught a vision while working as a tour guide to take young people from these towns up on to the mountain, a sacred place for centuries to the Cape's native inhabitants, to confront the buried pain and high-stakes decisions of life in the shanties. Over the course of several excursions the children become leaders who guide their peers on new trips in the future. Lindela and his co-leaders are very much in a counselling/leading role throughout, their goal is to help the kids flourish in their gifts as they interact with each other. 

This weekend, however, we were the childrens' posy, and they were our guides up the mountain. There is inevitably some awkward friction when the predominately-white and absolutely privileged meet the black and disempowered, but with each step up the trail we warmed to each other, and by the time we reached the cabins up top it felt entirely natural to drop our packs and get right into a game of soccer. Like in Rwanda, I felt that there are some bridges that can be crossed in a moment, other that can be crossed in a couple of hours, others that take years, and some that simply don't exist. Yet when you back away from the goal of changing a young person's life in two days and simply focus on enjoying the moment for what it is you find that there's meaning enough in a game of soccer or cricket, shared tuna sandwiches, a walk along the bluffs, or scrubbing up dinner dishes together after a long day on the trial. 

It was the first Easter that I've spent away from church, but the joy of being out with the kids in nature's cathedral was more than I could have asked for. Christ says that he came that we would have life and life to the fullest, not just in the life to come but welling up from within us today. I pray that BEEP will help foster rich fruit in these kids' minds and hearts for generations to come. 

South Africa has been a joy so far, and I am looking forward to experiencing more of this place when I return from Zimbabwe next Saturday. Tomorrow morning I'm off to Harare and Victoria Falls with my cousin Matthew, who has generously offered to finance my share of the trip. So excited! Pray for safety, sound decision making, and meaningful interactions with Zimbabweans even as we seek to stay safe in the midst of a fairly volatile situation. 

I would have liked more time to journal, but my friend Akosua needs her mac back--thanks for the mac, Kos!

Abrazos, 

Aaron