A few wild things

Jonathan Dockery! From Winston Salem to Johannesburg, where he is working with the cutting-edge microfinance group Paradigm Shift. Our paradigms shifted as we ate dinner with him in a hip side of town, where Ferraris and Lambourghinis rule—and ate ostrich fillets and other African dishes. Oh, and a waiter painted our faces by candlelight.

At a nearby lion park, we got closeups with more wildlife, including extremely rare white lions (below). 

We also saw zebras, springboks, rare birds, a cheetah, and some nasty hyenas. The highlight was Sara playing with the lion cubs, until one got a little aggressive and with one cub paw pulled her to the ground. Like Aslan, these lions aren't safe but possibly they aren't good either. Our game guide told us of several tourists killed because they thought lying lions looked cuddly enough to touch. We stayed in the safari truck, but still were close enough to touch. 


Sara did get up close with a giraffe who loves to curl his tongue around your hand to pull in the whole bag of food. He seemed practiced.

Musical beds

Already we are losing track of the beds we’ve slept in, but last night we slept aboard a train between Cape Town and Johannesburg—Nat in one sleeper cabin and Sara and me together in another. 

Porters made our beds while we ate a luxurious dinner, making for a relaxing, 26-hour trip that took us through vineyard upon vineyard to scrub desert and mining country.  Our Premier Classe train is a somewhere below a Blue Train but at least a grade above regular passenger service. Everywhere we’ve been the Africans have treated us to exceptional hospitality: Our guesthouse hosts and these porters have made dinner reservations for us, called cabs, driven us places themselves, made food to order, dusted while chatting, taken our trash, etc.

We are winding up our time in South Africa but not without enjoying wildlife, the water, and good food. 

 African penguins! Here a colony of them at Betty’s Bay, where we stopped Sunday afternoon on our way from Hermanus back to Cape Town.

 Seals out in Table Bay, where we took a sail on Monday. And a lone shark that wandered into the harbor. 

We had perfect sailing weather—light winds, sunny and cool—and our regret was that Jim Goffin wasn’t aboard to show the crew what’s what.

We did meet onboard several Sudanese who also attended the Lausanne conference, including an Anglican bishop from Nuba Mountains who told me of their delegations’ meetings with African regional leaders to press for peace as the January referendum moves forward. Everyone expects the South of Sudan to vote for succession, and that will leave areas like Nuba and Blue Nile (where I travelled 10 years ago) in a very precarious state. He was strong too in his belief that the north will quickly move to becoming a radical Islamic state after the referendum. All this, pulling into the dock in Cape Town harbor—keeping us grounded to the realities of life in this beautiful place.

Our trip is reaching its midpoint, but we have miles to go…

Whale watching in Hermanus

Every July, Southern Right Whales migrate to Hermanus, a town south of Cape Town, to mate and calve. They remain there until November, then return to the oceans around Antarctica until the next winter. One of these whales can weigh up to 80 tons and be up to 15.5 meters long. It's tail fin can be up to 3 meters long. We drove to Hermanus for a few days to see if we could catch of glimpse of some, and we did.

There's a path along to rocky shore that's great for spotting them, and sometimes they came close enough for us to see their features clearly through the water. We wished we had a foot-long lens or a big pair of binoculars like some of the other tourists, but our point-and-shoot did us just fine.

Further down the path, you pass some little Dutch cottages. On the roof of one of them were two men who were watercoloring. It was hard to believe we were actually in Africa.—by Sara

To the Cape

First the Atlantic and then the Indian Ocean opened up before us as we headed south from Cape Town on Thursday. We hugged the Atlantic side on a road high above the beaches and palms and resorts of Camps Bay and other seaside enclaves. At Constantia we cut inland—the green pasturelands were calling to us—and made our way to the oldest vineyard in South Africa, Groot Constantia, founded in 1658. Situated on a rise, the rows of vines march off to the south where you can see the Indian Ocean in the distance, and up hills toward the Atlantic coast. The manor house and winery are tall and Dutch with thatched roofs. We marveled at the trees (the 9th grade leaf project cannot be stopped; it can only be Africanized!), the vistas, the breeze, and the wine itself.

But oceans, and the Cape of Good Hope were beckoning. Through sun, clouds, wind, rain, and sun again we made our way south to the Cape Point Nature Preserve and the other-world that is the end of the African continent, the starting point of all colonial-era landings. Much of it is a treeless wonder of rocks, wildflowers and scrub known here as fynbos. And baboons. A large, grandaddy of a baboon greeted us at roadside as we entered the preserve, and at one point we had to stop our car and weave through an extended family of young and old. They are cute, annoying, and apparently a menace. They reportedly can open a car door and climb in.

At Cape Point we took a funicular (the new rescatura for trip duration) to the lighthouse, hiked to its peak, and watched below as birds dived, wind howled, and two oceans mingled together. It was a faraway land even as we stood on it, something out of Myst, and hard to believe we had made it.

But we had another hike to go, about a 30 minute trek down a narrow path along the spine of the very point, further out and further in, Drew would say, where only a few go. We're so glad Sara (and Drew in our minds) urged us on...away from the tour groups to just hear the waves and birds and wind. Out there we discovered another lighthouse, one built earlier in 1919, perched on a slab of rock over the waters. A plaque said its light flashed three times a minute at "1,000,000 candles power" visible for 63 km (that's 40 miles!) in all directions. I've never been anywhere where the ocean felt so immense, and we so small.

Lausanne's big small world

Onesimus was reason enough to come to South Africa. He is the chaplain to the Archbishop of Uganda, Henry Orombi, and a mighty man of God. Here we are awaiting the week's first press conference.
But that's just the beginning of the small world of the very big Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization—with its 4,000 delegates from about 200 countries. Other samples, largely involving meals: At Sunday's opening night dinner I filled a plate from one of a gazillion buffet tables lining two floors of the Cape Town convention center. Then I headed upstairs to a giant ballroom, sat down at a random round table with a pastor from Estonia, a teacher from Chad, and Gabi Nagy, who teaches English in Budapest, and is Hungarian. She's a delightful, animated young woman and after a few minutes of chatting, I asked, "Do you by any random chance know Heidi Meiners?" Heidi is a friend from Asheville who also teaches in Budapest (yes, a big city) but Gabi's jaw dropped, and she said, "She's one of my best friends." I explained that we've known Heidi since she was a little girl, she babysat my children in Asheville, and her father had taught all my children.
Monday's lunch was a boxed lunch that most ate standing up at the empty buffet tables, and through the throng of people I spied Covenant Seminary President (and World Magazine board member) Bryan Chapell, who was heading up an important working group of theological schools from around the world at Lausanne, among many other things. Monday's dinner included conversation with a pastor from Johannesburg named Cecil. At Tuesday's dinner I ran into Doug Nichols, who heads up Action International Ministries and just a few months ago stopped in to see me in Asheville. He was at a table with Daren Beck who works with a school in Cambodia (and knows Marvin Olasky). And Joel Edwards, who used to head up the Evangelical Alliance in UK (connection: Anna Moyle; he's her former boss) and now heads up the Micah Challenge.

On Wednesday we celebrated a long and cherished connection with Os Guinness over breakfast, and including our friend Emad Beshay Ibrahim. Emad took such good care of our family in Cairo (over the Eastern Christmas, no less!) that he is a mythological character: When we're lost, where's Emad? Don't know what time a school event starts, ask Emad! Need help planning just anything, call Emad! He is still wonderful, sincere, humble, and helping to manage the hard work of Mama Maggie and Stephen's Children in Cairo...but also now married and with two children, ages two and four!!
Os, meanwhile rightly diagnosed what's troubling many about this year's Lausanne Congress—"the shift from proclamation to conversation, from solid substance to sound-biting, from truth to entertainment.”
And then there were coffee line run-ins: with Labib Madanat of the Palestinian & Israeli Bible Society, plus pastors Joel and others from Baghdad, the legendary Peter Hammond from South Africa, Carl Ellis from Chattanooga, even a pastor-friend from Kabul, Afghanistan. All in the same building in Cape Town, South Africa.

And somewhere along the way these two travelers showed up. And they are a sight for sore eyes.