In Which I Indulge in an Extended Metaphor on Caving and Art

Today, while watching the Mountain go all rosy from the top of a downtown parking garage, a key lesson applicable to both art and caving made itself clear to me. That is, the way into a large subject (or cave) may be very small, and you may have to blunder around a lot before you find it. The same can also be said of documentary filmmaking, to which I will return in a moment.

This being a blog—a travel blog, no less—I believe I’m allowed to simply begin with, “This morning in Cape Town, I woke up and then I had breakfast.” Actually, my breakfast was both interesting and Capetonian, as it included scrambled eggs (not the interesting part) and atchar, a Cape Malay pickled relish. In true Jenny Estill fashion, that is, without really knowing what it was, I bought a jar from two gregarious Coloured women who have a spice stand outside the central train station. I also ate an unidentified dried fruit that one of them foisted on me with no explanation except that she also sold them preserved in syrup.

Breakfast aside, by Wednesday morning I had already had enough experiences to write several entries but felt totally uninspired to do so. On Sunday, for example, I woke up early and drove down the eastern side of the peninsula to meet up with a hiking group. Most of the assembled hikers were over 60, and while I aspire to be like them when I reach that age, I did not particularly want to hike at their pace. At the first rest stop, two younger guys made a (very polite) break for it, and I tagged along. That last statement is somewhat inaccurate. Unable to gauge their exact degree of gnarliness and not wanting to slow them down, I took off when I found myself in front and increased their normal pace by a third. But we had a splendid day; the weather was stunning and the trails in Table Mountain National Park are so well-marked you hardly need a map.




Overlooking False Bay, with rainbow.





A protea, national flower of South Africa and part of the fynbos family of plants, which are only found on the Cape Peninsula.

Looking over False Bay again. I kept expecting Puddleglum to appear from behind one of these rock formations.

Nonetheless, Barry had a GPS unit, which we used (unsuccessfully) to locate the entrance to a huge cave he’d visited on a previous hike. We got thoroughly dirty slithering around in a smaller cave but never found the one he was looking for.

I kept wondering why the entrance was so hard to find and finally realized that I had been picturing a gaping hole in the side of the mountain complete with petroglyphs and Neanderthals roasting springboks over a fire. I think I’d better get my Fairy Godfather to take me caving and correct these Hollywood misrepresentations. It didn’t matter that we never found the cave, as our real (and handily accomplished) goal was to enjoy tromping around on the mountain.

But for anyone looking to set down their experiences or ideas on paper (or onstage or on camera), the search for the gaping hole in the mountainside is frustrating and ultimately fruitless. It’s particularly deadly when writing about an entirely new and foreign country; where do I start if not with breakfast? I start with something small, something serendipitous, something that catches my fancy or stops me in my tracks. I can only write about the South Africa that’s under my feet or whetting my appetite or making my heart knock against my ribcage.

I took a wrong turn into the garage after dropping a friend off near the train station and could find no place to turn around until after I’d pressed the button for a parking ticket. Signs instructed casual parkers like me to proceed to the 5th floor, which I did, for lack of anything pressing to do at home. I never tire of seeing Cape Town from new and interesting angles, and as I was unlikely to see it from this one again, I thought I might as well eat my supper and enjoy it the view. My rooftop picnic, with the sun setting on the Mountain and the boisterous, colorful parade of people going to and from the station below, was both delightful and mildly ridiculous. It was also, I discovered as something inside me lifted and then clicked into place, my way in for this week.

It was a good lesson to have reinforced as I head into my second week of participating in/facilitating a documentary workshop that NATA is sponsoring. The workshop is run by a charity called the World Film Collective, which teaches young people in disadvantaged communities to make short films on camera phones and then publishes the films on their website (http://www.worldfilmcollective.com/). It’s a neat idea, especially given the ubiquity, mobility, and unobtrusiveness of the camera phone. One of the hardest parts of making a movie or documentary, however, is choosing the small story that will tell the big story and which you as the filmmaker can tell with honesty and insight and in the time allotted.

I’ve learned a lot about filmmaking this week and possibly even more about editing with the horror that is Windows Movie Maker—so much so that I’m actually teaching people how to use a computer program. I was shocked, however, at how much more fluent with the computer I am than the young South Africans I’m working with and immediately sorry for every time I’d grumbled during typing lessons or lab sessions. My computer literacy is a gift and a skill unavailable to the millions of people who don’t have access to the technology that shapes so much of modern life. That being said, as I can barely get my bottom-of-the-line South African cell phone to work, I don’t think I’ll switch my major just yet.

Alas; I shall have to save Rauzilena the Seal and jackass penguins for my next installment.