Day 15 - Century City

There is a suburb of Cape Town called Century City (so named because it was built in 2000) which "was constructed as a mixed use development conforming to the "new urbanism" of creating integrated neighbourhoods including entertainment, residential, retail and office components". It's a pretty ritzy area, lots of glitz and glam, you can almost feel money running through it.

Inside Century City is a shopping mall called Canal Walk, which is where we went today, again on a quest to find an elusive CD. I didn't get to really see much, much less stop and take pictures, except for a potentially luxuriant trot along the canal itself. We breezed through the shops, had an ill fated encounter with the bank, snatched a CD (got mom her Xmas present - the new Jason Mraz CD... but I got it IN South Africa!), bought some food at the grocery, and shot out of there.

I did get a few photos.


Apparently when they built the mall (which by the way is the biggest one on the African continent, apparently - compared to the average American mall, it's nice and pretty huge, but not enormous - not that I spend lots of time in malls so maybe I can't compare) they were trying for a theme of "inside a space ship" or something, and had lots of these funny statues all around. Hmm...



Ah! Now THIS is what I travelled a bajillion miles for! McDonald's and KFC. I still need to go into one of these places and compare the menu to the American one.

If you're really sensitive to being Politically Correct, shut down for just a minute. I find it amusing (and perhaps faintly concerning?) that there is KFC freaking EVERYWHERE in Cape Town. Isn't there a racist stereotype about black people in America loving fried chicken? Apparently this is not a completely false perception?? lol okay, I'll be good.





"South Africa's giant play park!"



This is a picture of the Prayer Room. It's for the Muslim workers.

I wanted to take a moment to just point out something. Apartheid. I imagine anyone who knows anything about South Africa knows that word. Institutionalized Apartness. The big Race Thing.

I'm coming to understand more and more that Apartheid only ended less than 15 years ago. Fifteen. When I was born, this country was still keeping "blacks" and "whites" (and others) apart with laws. It's quite a thing, because in America, Martin Luther King and all that went through decades ago. Our country has come a LONG way since then, and even still we struggle with racism. We've torn up the big ugly weeds, but the roots of segregation are still underground where we have to get our hands dirty to get at them.

This country has problems; big ones. But there is hope. There is a huge, enormous amount of POTENTIAL here. I feel it. Like someone threaded a wire right through me when I landed here, hooking me up to every person I encounter. God is a great electrician, making all the right connections and setting up breakers, and setting up to turn on a seriously powerful current that I think is going to light up the world.

I took this photo on Day 2. It's of a halal food take away. I'm still amazed to see them all over the place. It's an awesome thing to me, I don't even known exactly how to describe it. Here, Islam is commonplace. It's in the food on the side of the street. That speaks VOLUMES to me, though I still don' t know how to express it. But I keep coming back to this picture and trying to figure out what it's saying to me...



Eleven official languages. There's so much room here.