"Welcome Home, Little Brother"

Noah and Jude with Township Folk

That’s what our  Cape Town cab driver (native, dark-skinned African) said to Noah when he dropped us off at the car rental agency: “welcome home, little brother.”  That was one of several such comments Noah got from folks in Cape Town.  On top of that, a number of fellow voyagers have asked us interesting questions: “what’s it like for Noah to find himself in a place where most of the people are black?”  “Have you seen him respond in any interesting way to the fact that there are so many people here who look like him?”  Questions like that.  I’m not exactly certain what these no doubt well intentioned questions are driving at or what the askers are expecting or wanting to hear.  The answer is that Noah spent his time in South Africa being Noah, which means enjoying himself, charming everyone, and learning more about himself and the world.

That’s not to say that Noah’s awareness of his, well, specialness is not growing.  Today Noah turns 5.  It’s incredible and amazing.  Today I feel so incredibly lucky to get to be Noah’s dad, to be the guy who has the privilege of going to him when he wakes up wet at 5:30 AM (as he did today), of painting and playing with him, of hearing him sing.  The singing has been a special delight lately—mashups of Disney and all the songs he’s heard on Glee: “Let It Go,” “Single Ladies,” “Wrecking Ball,” “Firework.”  The other day he was walking down the staircase singing “Like a Virgin.”  The students were howling. 

Another detail.  Susan is irritated that I don’t hold the line on carrying him, usually on my shoulders.  “We’ll have a child at 16 who can’t walk,” she says.  I and my aching back agree, of course.  I know that I give in only partly on account of his importuning.  Truth is, I’m clinging.  Some of my own earliest memories are of riding on my dad’s shoulders.  I don’t want him to grow up so fast, and I know that I will miss terribly the closeness I get now.  

Yes, I feel all this acutely, because the growing is happening rapidly.  Noah has learned to swim and jump in the pool here on the MV Explorer.  His drawing and literacy are advancing.  He’s taller.  And yes: he’s gaining awareness of his curious demographic ontology.  Again, shipboard life has really helped here.  His best buddies are Sukari and Amare, daughter and son of our communications prof, and Jude, son of our linguistic anthropologist.  

Noah, Suki, and Amare at the Aquarium

Noah and Jude watching penguins

It’s indescribably wonderful that here on board the ship Noah has had a magnificently diverse community of playmates.  He and Suki say that their skin is the same color, and they swim like fish together.  He and Jude build forts and fight over Jude’s iPad.  His many other playmates span a big slice of the human spectrum in terms of age, skin tone, country of origin, etc. etc.  We have wondered, and everybody seems to ask, what will Noah take away from this trip?  Perhaps not much in terms of concrete memories—apart from what photos will preserve, I suppose.  But I have to hope and believe that in his bones he will carry, at the very least, the memory of being a full member of the incredible playgroup on board the ship.  He loves these kids so much—calls out when he sees them across the dining hall, hates it when he has to say goodbye.  And they love him.  We’re dreading the moment of the final goodbye on April 29th.

The cosmopolitan utopia of shipboard life was set in contrast to the curious reality that is South Africa. Thanks mostly to Susan, yes, Noah has been learning about apartheid and about Nelson Mandela and is just entering into a lifelong engagement with the questions of race and justice in this broken world.

The South African Nobel Peace Prize winners: from right to left, Mandela, DeClerk, Tutu, and a guy whose name I don't remember

 Apartheid is over; apartheid thrives.  South Africa, I am told, has the second widest income disparity of any country on earth (the first being Singapore, a singularly weird place that I haven’t yet reported on).  The inequalities, built around race, are everywhere and inescapable.  Noah certainly noticed it.  One day we drove to Stellenbosch, one of the crown jewels of South African wine country.  Stellenbosch looks like Tuscany or Provence or the Napa Valley, and there’s a premier university in the town that’s filled with near 100 percent white students.  Here’s Stellenbosch:

Europe south: thatched Dutch-style church amid the vineyards

To get to Stellenbosch, you drive over the Cape Plain, which is wall-to-wall black townships.  We visited one such township, Langa, on a Semester at Sea excursion.  Langa is full of prideful people who display great artistic talent:

Ceramics for sale

And play mean games of football:

Noah gave up fairly quickly--the level of play was high

But who live in the closest approximation to concentration camp conditions that I personally have ever seen:

Shack housing in Langa

Noah and Jude handed out toothbrushes and had a good time meeting the generous people of Langa.  With the beautiful non-judgment of kids, they just took it all in, enjoying everything and meeting new friends.

So the inequalities are stark in South Africa, as the surreal trip across the plains to the wine country teaches you.  In America the racial inequalities are also very, very stark—and growing starker, as supposedly post-racist white America continues its flight from the cities and from engagement with the structure of poverty as built by the movements of our history.  As anyone who knows me already knows, I refuse to let America off the hook.  But driving to Stellenbosch across the Cape Plain was almost embarrassingly painful.

In Cape Town proper, Noah could sink more easily into a fairly comfortable urban experience.  Apart from the magnificent geography, which includes Table Mountain and the desert scrubland of the Cape of Good Hope, Cape Town is twin to San Francisco—down to a lovely obsession with good food.  We enjoyed ourselves immensely, visiting a fine aquarium, taking the cable car up Table Mountain, touring an amazing aviary, seeing the African Penguins at Boulder Beach, and shopping in the native craft markets with good buddies.

Amid the Nemos

On Table Mountain

"Jackass" penguins, named for the bray

Noah and good friend Mezze at Green Market Square

Well, happy birthday, Noah.  May all the children of the world be as loved and cherished as you are, by family and village and world, as well as by mom and dad.