A night out in Cape Town.
I went out with a friend of mine to a shabby chic afro fusion restaurant that also functions as a club on some nights. A club in Cape Town looks like an old Cape Dutch Colonial style house, because it is – speaking of which, why is it that colonial architecture is so damn beautiful? Landgrabbers really had an eye for delightfully intricate design – now this Dutch style house is filled with old school Hip Hop interspersed with Nigerian Afropop – everyone sings along, everyone cheerses everyone, I bump into two people I have not seen in ten years, I drink a glass of red wine, reminisce with my old new friends about the good old days pre-gentrification (Woodstock, you feel me!), at 2am the music switches to Bob Marley’s slowest songs: international sign for “go home”. I get into my car (lies, it’s my parent’s), take with one or two people who I will drop off on the way home, force everyone to put on their seatbelts (They make them for a reason, Cape Town!) and then head up the road from Salt River Circle. When I spot the blue lights I have a short moment of paranoid panic (I had only one….and a half glasses!) but am relieved when I realise one of the policemen getting out of the van drawing a gun and pointing it into the side street. Phew, not a road block. Now in my slightly stoned mind – I did not smoke, but Ganesh is a small place and hotboxes quickly – I wonder whether car windows are bullet proof…can I just pass the police van? (Side note: my parent’s car has windows that you manually have to roll up.) Upon second thought, no, let me not get caught in the cross fire and just turn around like the cars behind me to follow an alternate route.
I get home, drink some water and am in bed by 2.30. That is my favourite thing about going out in Cape Town. You start early and end early and the next morning you can still get up to the sound of birds chirping at 10 am and have an entire day ahead of you sans the whole: fuck, I’m almost 30 and just wasted a whole day away being hungover in bed. I’ll probably go for a hike up Lion’s Head and while hiking I will look at the view and remember the drawn gun and wonder how on earth it can be possible that in such a paradise violence is a daily routine but then on my way home I will drive past old Cape Dutch style mansions and I will picture the people inside them and I will remember.