From Cape Town with Love Read Free

making clicking noises. The rock dassie’s head popped out from behind the rock.
    â€œTake a step away, April. He’ll come to the food. Don’t get too close.”
    Five rock dassies from five directions were making their way toward April. To me they looked like an attack party, but April was holding her breath, watching their approach with wide, childlike eyes. The animals didn’t walk in a straight line—they took a few cautious steps toward her, then zigzagged in another direction before walking toward April again. Like me, maybe.
    â€œHey, precious baby . . . ,” April said, and I wished she were talking to me. “You’re a sweet little boo, aren’t you, huh?” I wondered if anyone else, in the history of the world, had ever been jealous of a rock dassie.
    I instantly thought of him as Goofy. Goofy inched within a foot of her. Grinning wide, April froze like a statue as she waited. I made a mental scan of the area around us, just in case I would need something to beat Goofy away with. A rock would do the job.
    Goofy realized that April wasn’t a threat, so he raised the cracker with practiced paws and started munching—
Thanks, doll, you got any peanut butter to top this off?
    â€œTen, look!” April said. “He’s so cute! Can you take a picture of us?”
    Goofy did not push my Cute button. Every instinct told me to shoo him away.
    â€œThat’s great!” I said anyway, and snapped the photo.
    The other furballs in Goofy’s crew renewed their advance, their tiny legs scuttling toward April and her bright orange crackers. A lot of peoplewould have jumped up to run for cover, but April didn’t move from where she knelt in their path. I opened my mouth to warn April to back away, but I was stopped by her grin.
    I snapped another photo to try to capture April’s face—a barely harnessed joy that you rarely see in adults. A quiet thought surfaced:
April would make a great mother.
    Until that day on the mountain, I’d never had that thought about anyone.
    When you go to South Africa, don’t expect to find Africa right away.
    The first time I landed in Johannesburg, the rows of glass-paneled skyscrapers made me think I was back in L.A. Johannesburg is hamburger stands, malls, and movie theaters—more bland than L.A., actually, but you get the idea. Considering my exotic visions of Zulu warriors wrapped in zebra pelts, and lions roaming the savannahs, Jo’burg was a letdown. Cape Town feels eerily like San Francisco at first glance, down to the wineries and nightclubs, but its character feels less American than Jo’burg, more English influenced with colonial B and Bs.
    April and I hung out on Long Street, where the Cape-Dutch Victorian buildings and wrought-iron balconies made me feel like I was in Europe, especially the south of France. South Africa offers wealth and poverty with equal zeal, and much of Cape Town is a playground for the rich. Even on Long Street, it’s strange how few black faces you see—usually it’s white and Indian South Africans, or tourists from the world over. Apartheid might have ended in 1994, but the average black South African remains a long way from the mountaintop.
    The past is hard to overcome.
    But South Africa was celebrating while April and I were there; in 2010, it would be hosting the first World Cup ever held in Africa. In Soweto, especially, soccer madness had been everywhere, a rainbow of colors for teams like the Swallows and the Pirates. Stadiums were being built in ten South African cities, including Cape Town. The brand-new Green Point Stadium had views of Table Mountain and the ocean, majesty to suit the coming battles among nations.
    When Alice took me to Cape Town the first time, it was two years after Nelson Mandela had been elected president after twenty-seven years at nearby Robben Island prison—and the energy felt similar when I returned with April