Today's coordinates are 44 degrees north and 9 degrees west, just about going in to the Bay of Biscay, but not to worry the forecast is calmish, all things considered, so we shouldn't need travel sick meds or sick bags. Can feel how cool it is outside now, so we must be nearly there.
How have we amused ourselves today, apart from eating well? Firstly we discovered that we had £48 left in our onboard spending account, and as this is non-refundable we were forced to spend it in duty free, for me a glitzy Pandora charm and for Khachik some Bombay Saphire, soon spent.
Our highlight event today was Chris Lubbe's fourth and final talk. He began with some anecdotes about life with Nelson Mandela - like Mandela drinking the water in the finger bowl at a dinner at Buckingham Palace with the Queen. Apparently HM was most amused. Another tale was about how Chris had learned not to react to celebrity, and how he tried to play it cool when Denzel Washington came to the office, at first declining him a spontaneous audience with NM only to find that he was donating one million US dollars to Nelson Mandela's children's charity.
Then there was the visit of Princess Diana when Nelson Mandela forgot to put his shoes or belt on, and came out in his slippers, something he was forever embarrassed about but reportedly didn't phase Diana. He described what a rebel NM was in relation to high security. Aparently he had been instructed not to leave his vehicle in the US because there was intelligence that armed KKK members were in the crowd. This was fine until NM spotted a baby, and ordered Chris to let him out of the car. This resulted in a cascade of expletives through the elaborate body guards'communication systems, but NM's only tongue in cheek response was "that's why I have you Chris, to take the bullet for me!" Chris added that it was always the bodyguard who tasted the food, just in case it was poisoned.
Pretty quickly though we were brought back to serious business and reminded of the role of the British and the Dutch in the slave trade, and how those days preceded and fed apartheid. We learned how a slave owner might like his slave and might share his own name with him and so this is why many South Africans have surnames of their original slave owners. But also there were those who were given the surname of the month they were purchased - and this explains why some South Africans might be called January etc.
The session then went on to chronicle some of the events leading up to Chris being with us today.
The story about him and his dear friend Ashley being chased by the SA police during the Apartheid era and being thrown a lifeline firstly when the police car ran out of petrol, but secondly when an Afikaans farmer took them into his home, covered their car completely with hay, and then sheltered them for 2 months, after which he gave them his own car to protect them from being arrested. Sometime after that Ashley Kriel was murdered by the SA police. But Chris remembered those times, and once employed as NM's bodyguard, shared the story with NM and NM tracked that hero down and invited him to the President's residence, where his car was returned by Chris and Chris was able to thank him for saving their lives.
I am sorry I can't remember the whole story about Chris Hani, other than that he was murdered on the eve of the first democratic election in SA. So NM gave a rousing peace speech.
Chris gave us an insight too into the African concept of UBUNTU - very like Buddhist "interdependence", I am because you are and vice versa, no man is an island, sharing v. greed. Beautiful. There's so much more but my eyes are getting so tired now I will have to finish.
In my customer feedback form to P&O I have written more about Chris than anyone or anything else on the cruise, because he is so special and because I don't think he realises just how special. When his book The Pencil Test is released in August 2016 I will be reading it, and sharing whatever I can.
This afternoon I have painted a beach picture, while Khachik watched Leicester beat Swansea 4-1, and then gym. This evening after our final Blacktie dinner, we started to say our goodbyes to the staff who have been taking care of us. Here are our waiters from the Medina, Shakti is on the right.
Day 36, bloomin eck, that's gone so quickly.
Tomorrow there's an art exhibition and we have to pack and leave our bags outside the cabin during the afternoon so that we can be reunited with them in the terminal before we get on our coach to Manchester.
Bye for now xx
We are well on our way to Tenerife - this morning something serendipitous occurred when I was checking our position, the weather and our speed. We were at 21 degrees north, 21 degrees west, 21 degrees Celsius and 21 nautical miles per hour. Not much chance of that happening to us again. What could that mean in the great scheme of things? ;)
Anyway, times have since changed and here they are at 10 p.m. 24 north 18 west 21.5 nautical miles per hour and and 20 degrees celsius. This means we have crossed the Tropic of Cancer today, have passed Mauritania and are around the same latitude as Western Sahara. We will be saying goodbye to Africa tomorrow and re-entering Europe as we visit Tenerife, Gran Canaria and Madeira over the next 3 days.
Tomorrow we are on an excursion called "Northern Panorama", a half day in the afternoon by coach with very little walking to help me deal with hip ache, instead taking in the views. It is only 3 months since our last visit to Tenerife, so we remember Teide by cable car very well, and didn't really want to spend a day on the beach either so this one sounds new and interesting. I am reluctant to promise live contact via wi-fi, but am more hopeful than ever! Let's see.
Just a quick update on our sea day activities today: super healthy breakfast on the windy deck (force 6), painting a Cape Verdian woman bearing fish on head, roast turkey dinner for lunch.
Our high spot today was another inspirational talk by the most wonderful Chris Lubbe, a repeat of his first talk for those who had missed it with a few extra explanatory slides and a BBC feature about race classification during apartheid. A couple of times Chris alluded to the pre apartheid times and the segregation that pre-existed 1948, the colonial times, and the embarrassment it might cause us to to know that the British started it. Here's a timeline - it might help to clarify.
The BBC world Service has whole projects about African History to support Chris's talk, and the extract below is from there
"A large number of laws were passed to establish the apartheid structure of government. The three most important blocks of legislation were:
The Race Classification Act. Every citizen suspected of not being European was classified according to race.
The Mixed Marriages Act. It prohibited marriage between people of different races.
The Group Areas Act. It forced people of certain races into living in designated areas.
The apartheid regime had a number of pseudo scientific tests for classifying people as belonging to one of four main groups: White, Black, Indian, Coloured (mixed race). One of these tests involved putting a comb through hair - if it got stuck, that meant the person being tested was identified as African.
Every year, people were reclassified racially. In 1984, for example: 518 Coloured people were defined as White 2 whites were called Chinese 1 white was reclassified Indian 1 white became Coloured 89 Coloured people became African"
Chris gives personal perspective to the following table showing the inequality, taken from http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~cale/cs201/apartheid.hist.html. He speaks of the day his family's land was confiscated, resettling in a squatter camp with no possessions, attending a school with 60 pupils per class and no books, having to scavenge rubbish dumps for discarded books.
After Chris's talk I went to a second art class while Khachik went to gym, then an afternoon nap for me, just because I can. Tonight there was another 5 course dinner and a thoroughly enjoyable Shirley Bassey night with a rather good west-end musical performer called Clare Bonsu, with all the arm, eye and hip drama you'd expect from Shirl, two Beatles numbers, two Bond songs, Big Spender, I am what I am and everything!
Until tomorrow, so hoping to get some pictures up and chat! Bye for now xx
It's Friday. Love and peace especially the Ashpital family who need it more than ever.
Yesterday I talked about that wonderful speaker Chris Lubbe who had survived torture, repeated imprisonment and witnessing the murder of a man he was trying to help, rising above retaliation with the help of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, choosing a non-violent path. His generosity of spirit and his words are still going through my head. He said things like "some of you are suffering pain and ill health, but you will get through it." and "if I got through torture, you will get through this" "We do not have to accept the world as it is." "We need to do our part to bring about change". "Don't look back on bad things that have happened." "Find a way to make the world a better place".
And that has given me and I think hundreds of others lucky enough to have been on this cruise so much hope.
Since writing yesterday we have covered another 450 nautical miles, crossed the Equator and are heading North West, from the live info on screen it looks as though we are just south west of Liberia, (Hello Adrienne and Winston, thinking about inspiring people!). Our coordinates are 2 degrees north and 10 degrees west, so as predicted back in the Northern Hemisphere. It's 31C today, and cloud cover is classed as 5/8. The heat has advised us indoors again, firstly to paint a humming bird with a background produced by putting a wet on wet wash under a sheet of Clingfilm. I love the effect the wrinkles make. I went to two art classes actually.
Then we lunched, heartily again, listened to a Historical Murder Presentation, one of a series presented by an ex- policeman who has researched them, and now tells the stories, presents the evidence before the audience becomes the jury and then hears the outcome.
Today at lunch we were accompanied by a pod of dolphins for several minutes. Beautiful shiny dolphins jumping, playing, friends. It was so lovely to see them. I am amazed that considering where we are we hardly see any sea life, so its a real delight when it happens. The flying fish have come back again too, so we watch them from the balcony too, and enjoy beautiful sunrises, changing seas and skies.
Over the course of a lovely dinner we talked to the couple from Scotland we dined with two nights ago, Margaret and Alan. We covered some ground! Family, teaching, South African politics, hip replacements, world travel, this cruise. They were lovely and so easy to talk to. We discovered that Jimmy James hadn't been allowed to disembark in Cape Town to travel on to his next cruise ship gig. He apparently didn't have enough blank pages in his passport.
For a few days we have been back on UK time, but tonight we will put the clocks back an hour, and possibly one more time before we turn right after Cape Verde and head north eastwards towards the Canaries and Madeira. Two more sea days yo land...
Early night for us - all this on board activity and inspiration can be tiring. Bye for now x
We are both feeling really sad for our dear son-in-law Rob, and for Sara, Izzy and Leon as they are forced to come to terms with their awful sudden loss of Grandad Roy, and their unbearable grief. Love and peace, my dears xx
As we travel northwards up the South Atlantic we can feel the move into the tropics again. I am sitting on the balcony feeling the intense heat and humidity again. Not feeling very much like talking today. The sea is calm and there's minimal swell so nausea is a distant memory from the Indian Ocean, and long may it stay that way. We have another 2000 nautical miles to travel before our next stop in Cape Verde. We are currently at 6 degrees south of the equator and 12 degrees west, that puts us in the part of the Atlantic to the west of Angola. I am guessing that means there'll be an uneventful an equator crossing while we sleep in our air conditioned cabin. We are continuing with our art classes - Namibian sand dune landscape yesterday, and Namibian Gecko today. All good.
Once again we have been to hear an inspirational talk by Chris Lubbe, the second of three. Apologies if the following summary seems a bit disjointed. I didn't write anything down at the time and there's so much to remember. I only hope I do Mr Lubbe justice. Today he spoke a little more about his own life. He had left us on a cliff-hanger on 11th as he described having to witness the black man he was trying to help from missing his train being pushed out of the moving train by two white South African police. He reminded us of witnessing his own mother being thrown to the floor for sitting on a whites only bench whilst waiting for emergency medical aid as she slipped into a diabetic coma. These two events are what led him further into political activism, further imprisonment and the most vile of all torture.
He also spoke to us of how the late Steve Biko had visited and supported the squatter camp to which his family had been exiled in Durban, and taught Chris and his peers to write letters to world leaders, and of his own letter which he wrote to the Queen, but never received a reply.(see later). You might remember Steve Biko and Donald Wood in the film Cry Freedom starring Denzel Washington as Steve Biko. (Trailer)
In answer to a question one of the cruisers asked him - where and how did Apartheid begin? He showed a photograph of the architect of apartheid in South Africa, Hendrik Verwoerd (sp?) He is said to have learned about it from the British Colonialists and the Bible. It started in 1948. Thereafter successive governments up to P.W Boethe got away with imposing white supremacy and sanctioning the use of violence and all kinds of cruelty to control the black majority. This was very strangely after the Holocaust and the defeat of Hitler, and contemporary with segregation by colour in the southern states of the USA. A World War against, amongst other things, Arian supremacy had just been fought and won. How did Apartheid slip through without similar worldwide intervention? What made this situation any less worthy of the interventions of the 70's and 80's 40 years sooner? It's so obviously evil. What makes humans do something so wrong for so long?
He also illustrated how political will outside of South Africa was changing. Trevor Huddleston was working in SA and became vocal about human rights. He was banned from SA and on return to the UK turned to the Anti-Apartheid movement. This gained momentum and slogans began to appear in high profile places. Bands and musicians began to put on their albums "we do not support Apartheid", and slowly governments were influenced to withdraw trade and force the SA economy into jeopardy. We were also played the anthem "Free Nelson Mandela" to remind us of the times when a person buying a Free Nelson Mandela mug in the UK and taking it back to SA was sent to death row for bringing in "subversive material". He told us how vhs tapes of the Free Nelson Mandela music concert were banned and had to be smuggled into South Africa - again this was deemed to be "Subversive material". He recollected how just as the film was about to be shown, the venue was raided, he got caught and imprisoned. He described imprisonment and the inevitable torture of black political prisoners to make them talk, like being handcuffed and having his feet bound, and then being stood under a cold shower for a week, surviving only from the water from the shower, and becoming emaciated. Several times he thought he knew he was going to die. The guards would get bored and play Russian Roulette with him. One night after being forced to hold a gun to his own head, firing several blanks, knowing his chances were 0, the live bullet got jammed, and even though he had already suffered, he began to think his father's prayers for his safety were being answered, because he had survived. He recalls how he resolved not to become violent in his struggle, instead to take a peaceful approach.
I hadn't realised that Elton John and Queen had played in Sun City when people like Peter Gabriel and Bob Geldoff were boycotting apartheid and being very vocal about the injustices. I wonder why they did this? I wonder how they feel about it now?
Apartheid had many extreme and violent supporters in high positions - Chris mentioned Eugene de Kock aka"Prime Evil", imprisoned for 20 years for his role in murders. I have, since this talk, been looking on the net for history of Apartheid and discovered the most extreme end is still in existence. It makes me feel very uncomfortable but in the interest of balance it is right to include the flip side of the Rainbow Nation, without wanting to give it much space. Footage and articles about Eugene TerreBlanche give this side of the story. One of the most disturbing clips of Terreblanche I watched was an old Louis Theroux programme which looks as though it may have been aborted after a few minutes
Apartheid covered many public places - beaches, benches, toilets, buses, hospitals, schools, colleges,workplaces.
Black people sitting down on whites-only beaches was illegal. Peaceful seated protests were often brought to an end by police helicopters landing near a sit in, and invariably violence. However, black people jogging on the beach wasn't illegal until the 1980's, a loophole which Chris showed was exploited as far as it could be, by daily jogs. Chris has a photo of Arhbishop Desmond Tutu jogging on the beach laughing and wearing a T-shirt with "Just Call me Arch" printed on the front. He referred to Arch as a mischief maker, something I have now heard several times.
At around the time when many white South Afrians were beginning to express anti-Apartheid sentiments, a group of White women in South Africa formed a Black Sash organisation and silently and non-violently protested against Apartheid, without arrests because they were white, in large numbers. We never heard about this. During Apartheid the newspapers were always censored, and access to outside or "dissident" news was blocked. Often whole articles or pages were blacked out.
During this time the ruling party had selected a new leader. Chris quite emphatically described how F W De Klerk was largely unrecognised as a strategist or for his contribution to the changes in South African government, although the Nobel Peace prize was awarded to both Mr Mandela and Mr De Klerk. De Klerk had apparently feigned right-wing-ness to become selected as the new party leader, yet once elected his true views became instantly known. Without hesitation he released Nelson Mandela in 1991 and unbanned the ANC.
Nelson Mandela tracked Chris down at some point after his release, phoned him and invited him to meet with him. Chris thought it was a hoax, and hung up on him! It was real, he called back and Mandela offered him employment as a body guard, even though Chris confessed to not being able to use a gun. Mandela sent him to be trained with the SAS. By getting into contact with Nelson Mandela, Chris discovered his father had actually also been an activist whilst he (Chris) had been growing up. Chris's father had hidden Nelson Mandela from the police when he was on the run. Chris recollects how twitchy his father was after 9 at night when anyone came to the door, but had no idea what the reason was. His father told him that he didn't tell Chris he was hiding Mandela because he would have "blabbed" and got everyone sent to prison.
Three years later the country had its first democratic election and the ANC won with a landslide, some new voters queued for 3 days to cast their vote. Nelson Mandela became President on 10th May 1994.
One day early on in his government, Mandela gathered his team together and said he wanted to make FW de Klerk his deputy. This is the point where soul searching about the true meaning of reconciliation began. Chris then showed us a short extract of the film Invictus, and pointed out the character who was playing him, and how the film differed from reality. The scene in the film represented the moment in Chris's real life of a massive shift of attitude, the moment when the former white special branch who had inflicted torture, became the body guards of Nelson Mandela's team. It wasn't easy, but it happened. One of these men had actually tortured Chris, and he told us how he is now his friend, really genuinely his friend.
So in this part of his story Chris remembers the boy from the shack in Durban with no electricity or water now travelling the world with hero Nelson Mandela, advising him sometimes, meeting world leaders, including the Queen and the president of the USA. He related a very touching story of how the Queen brought the letter to him he had sent from South Africa under Biko's tutelage. It seems the Queen did reply but censorship of the mail in SA meant he never received her reply. The closing part of the talk showed famous quotes from Desmond Tutu about forgiveness leading to freedom, Truth and Reconciliation, the movement forward, Nelson Mandela's vision for a Rainbow Nation and the way he changed the association of the Springbok with white south Africa into a powerful message of reconciliation.
There is one more session about Truth and Reconciliation to come tomorrow.
This is the longest stretch we have ever been at sea without port stops, so we'll make sure we keep busy and plan our leisure activities and our education. There are two art classes a day, two craft classes, two visiting speakers, several health and beauty presentations and four different types of light entertainment. And while Khachik is still going into the gym every day, I do like a bit of telly too
This afternoon there was also a most distressing, totally necessary, illuminating talk by Chris Lubbe, former body guard of Nelson Mandela. He lived through apartheid and in today's talk he reflected on his childhood and the realisation of what apartheid meant through the things he saw around him in his own life. He gave a bit of background to his own heritage, and how he came to be legally (in apartheid) classified as coloured. His grandmother was a maid who was raped by her white employer. When he was born he had a lighter brown skin colour than "black" classification allowed, and blond curly hair. As an infant he went through various bizarre racist tests like measurement of the breadth of his nose, thickness of his lips using a ruler, and famously the "pencil test" where a pencil was put through his hair. The determining factor was if it the pencil sticks in the person's curls, the person is classified as "coloured", if it drops straight through to the floor the classification is "white". Apparently white children in black families just weren't allowed, so if a child was classified as white they were either placed for adoption or sent to an orphanage. Chris's father said "luckily the pencil got stuck", but for Chris it meant he was not classified as black like his dad and as a result experienced many different kinds of discrimination and feelings of not belonging anywhere.
Chris then spoke about his recent work for Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu. He has several anecdotes of the fun had by Nelson Mandela denying celebrity, and imploring him to do the same. He also told us of his responsibility to tell things they way they were. He even has a piece of limestone from Robben Island, given to him by Nelson Mandela for him to use as a visual aid, so that future generations would know what their forefathers went through. He then went on to tell several very powerful stories. I am going to try to remember some of them.
First when he was six his family was living in port St John which I think is in the Eastern Cape on their own inherited land, farming animals. One day two white government officials appeared on their land to give them 7 days notice to pack and leave for Durban, as the land they owned had been reclaimed as "whites only" land. They moved without possessions to a squatter camp, and became homeless and destitute, with no system of justice to protect them. Their former land became a whites-only holiday resort.
Next at the age of 8, on his 8th birthday in fact, his mother took him on a bus ride by way of celebration. He became aware of "non-white" buses, benches, toilets, hospital, areas in towns. During the bus ride his diabetic mother became ill. The driver was unable to stop the bus to let them off. When they were let off the bus the only seat available was white only. She sat there waiting for emergency aid. A white woman agreed to make a phone call in a white only phone kiosk to avoid a black passer by being arrested. Chris described how two policemen came and physically threw his mother from the bench to the floor, where she hit her head on the ground and was knocked unconscious. The two policemen just walked away, leaving Chris screaming for help. Luckily it came. Some women came, reassured Chris and helped until the ambulance arrived. This began a 3 month hospital stay, where she slowly recovered and returned home.
The final and for me most painful of all stories he explained that he had largely educated himself. Schools were very poor. Possibly 60 to a class, explaining he thinks the current high levels of illiteracy. He said there were volunteers who came in to the squatter camps with feeding programmes and extra lessons. He said one of those was a student, named Steve Biko.
Of course with the help of Peter Gabriel's haunting song Biko, his tragic story is now famous, but in the earlier days before his incarceration and untimely death in custody in 1977, he taught Chris. Chris described searching dumps for disposed books, reading under the bedclothes with the one family torch, and always running down the batteries.
These were clear moments which inspired Chris to become an equal rights activist, and along with that came his own inevitable imprisonment for 4 months with hardened criminals. His crime was leading a demonstration.
Following his imprisonment he decided to reply to an advertisement for trainee aeroplane pilots, only to be rejected because he wasn't white. He was bitterly disappointed and with the help of his uncle took a job on the railways. During this time he helped a black man not miss his train by allowing him onto a white-only carriage, and then walking with him through white-only carriages to reach the black-only 3rd class carriages. Here they were both beaten up by two white police officers. Chris was thrown to floor and sustained a severe beating and a broken arm. As the other white passengers looked on, the man he was helping was then thrown out of a moving carriage to his death.
This was the end of his talk, a cliff-hanger. Chris vividly gave an account of his devastation, how he was left to cope with this without counselling...... to be continued on 13th. Oh my word. He is still here, having gone on to be Nelson Mandela's body guard, and has so much more to tell us about Truth and Reconciliation. This is a miracle in itself and we feel really privileged to be here with him.
I am not going to be able to write about anything else today.
xx
Since coming home I have been listening and watching many documentaries like this on you tube if you would like to get a bit more background to Apartheid and Nelson Mandela's family today, and a somewhat negative flip side of the Truth and Reconciliation process.
As we were 5 hours late getting off the ship due to that aforementioned administrative issue, we went straight to the V&A Waterfront and enjoyed a lovely evening meal outside, returning back to our cabin quite late.
We are sad to say that our dining mates Chris and Keith leave the ship today, and we have said our goodbyes at 8 this morning, but not forever. They live close so we will meet again, I'm sure. It has been such a pleasure dining together every night so far. It will be very different without them.
Well I have to report that the weather forecast was very wrong, in a really good way. We went out with our jackets on just after breakfast for our excursion to Robben Island, only to find the temperature rising above 30C with clear blue skies. We were taken to the Waterfornt to catch the ferry over to the island, only about 15 minutes away on not too rough seas. The excursion, once on Robben Island was really wonderful with two great guides. The first guide was on the bus on the island and it was his job to describe the history, geography, flora and fauna. During the drive around the island we managed to see penguins, springboks, seals, tortoises and various indigenous birds. The other guide was a former prison inmate who showed us around the prison, and also gave us a bit of ANC history and an insight into life in the prison. Oh my, some people have been through such horrors just because of their race, and where and when they were born Khachik even asked him for a photo! I think his name was Xhoto.
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The second instalment of Nelson Mandela's story continued here in the prison (it was only a month ago since I visited Soweto with Lisa, and learned the first instalment), but now I have a real sense of walking in his footsteps.
Then it was time to leave the island, on a little ferry and head back to the ship. Our afternoon was pretty restful, but once again we went by free shuttle bus to the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront for our evening meal in the City Grill, and an opportunity for Khachik to try springbok and biltong.
Whoops, too late for ship's entertainment. Night all xx
20/3/2016 So today, after a very pleasing uninterrupted night time sleep :) we became more familiar with our new home. We stayed resolved to stay on board rather than have to queue for tenders over to Malacca, and I think we made the right choice. It is really hot, so slow-moving is where it's at. It's also very peaceful on board as about 1000 people have made the decision to explore the land. We started with a late breakfast, 10 a.m is late for us. I'm sure Khachik is eating for two, (ha!) that's easy to achieve. Meal times don't really exist as there's a continuous flow of any kind of food and drink that takes your fancy. Breakfast supposedly ends at 11:30, and lunch begins at 12:00. Lunch ends at 2:30 and afternoon tea begins at 3. Afternoon tea ends at 5:30 and dinner begins at 6. You can also always find a place to snack between meals too! like poolside snacks, and of course you can have room service if you choose not to venture out.
Our post-breakfast exercise was to try out the hot tub (me) and the gym (Khachik). The hot tub never disappoints, it is a good place for stretching. Afterwards I decided to try walking laps in the swimming pool (something recommended on the arthritis care website as a way of maintaining muscle strength when the joints are fecked). This will probably become my alternative to deck walking, which I am glad to say removes some of my current frustration. It is also accompanied by a selection of easy listening old music from Dolly Parton to Diana Ross, to which I can silently reminisce, in the sun under blue skies, ....sorry.
We have already accidentally bumped into and chatted to a very cheerful, savvy and eccentric serial cruiser called Ian, whom we met and quickly remembered from Arcadia last year, and another couple whose names we didn't find out (yet), even though we recognised them immediately from last years dance classes, and have often chatted together. They completed the world cruise last year and have done it all again this year. They look really well and happy. They were telling us that the ship couldn't get into Shanghai, having been delayed I think because of bad weather and delayed so much that Taiwan was taken off the itinerary. It made me realise how lucky we are to be on here, and on time.
Tonight we have exchanged our hugely sought after drinks vouchers from our loyalty tier for champagne (K) and elderflower presse (me)! Very enjoyable too, along with a second visit to the hot tub and a very interesting chat with a couple from Cardiff, one those chats where you cover a lot of ground in just a few minutes. They are cruising from Singapore like us but only to Cape Town and flying home. They look similar in age to us, and seem very active and leading full lives <3.
We also dined with another very friendly couple from near Northwich, Chris and Keith. Chris also enjoys watercolour painting, so we will probably meet again tomorrow when the art classes start. The art teacher up to Cape Town is called Tony Westmore, I am really looking forward to learning with him.
From the word on the deck there was indeed some frustration from the excursioners when trying to get back on the ship's tenders, and it would appear that quite a number of passengers had never experienced the phenomenon of the open sewer before today.
As we make our way to Sri Lanka we have three days at sea, the Indian Ocean, coming up. In terms of keeping in touch, we have limited satellite wi-fi @ £15 per hour (!), so we will not be able to browse/respond to much. I will be typing up the blog off line and posting it up super-quick though, until we reach Columbo, hopefully we will find wi-fi there.
He described what a rebel NM was in relation to high security. Aparently he had been instructed not to leave his vehicle in the US because there was intelligence that armed KKK members were in the crowd. This was fine until NM spotted a baby, and ordered Chris to let him out of the car. This resulted in a cascade of expletives through the elaborate body guards'communication systems, but NM's only tongue in cheek response was "that's why I have you Chris, to take the bullet for me!" Chris added that it was always the bodyguard who tasted the food, just in case it was poisoned.
Pretty quickly though we were brought back to serious business and reminded of the role of the British and the Dutch in the slave trade, and how those days preceded and fed apartheid. We learned how a slave owner might like his slave and might share his own name with him and so this is why many South Africans have surnames of their original slave owners. But also there were those who were given the surname of the month they were purchased - and this explains why some South Africans might be called January etc.
