Diamonds & Memories are Forever...

6th July 2010

Our last day in Cape Town!! For the last day, we managed to squeezed in few more main places to visit...(haha..sempat lagi tu..). It was drizzling when we went out and not far from the house, we spotted rainbow!! The background is Table Mountain.

About 5 minutes from our house, stood the Afrogem factory. I actually planned for one diamond factory tour, but since the company did not reply my email, I decided to let it slide. We pass by this factory everyday and spotted the Free Tour signage and decided to give it a try on our last day. We were taken to the manufacturing floor where all the jewelleries were made.

Ija bought few stones (nice cut btw) since the jewellery design is just asi-asi . But the stones are real bargain. For a total of 4 stones that can be made into one ring,one pendant and a pair of earring, she only paid less than RM 1K.

We target to go to The Bo Kapp Museum, but it was dissappointing. The museum sopposed to show the history of Muslim in Cape Town, I expected to see the items that was brough together by all these slaves from all over (maybe cooking utensils from Indonesia probably since Dutch did transport most of the Muslim slaves from there.) But what we see was just a house, with not much artifacs, the best that they have is posters showing how Bo Kapp used to be during British colonization. The second house link to the museum gave more about Islam, but still not much. I noticed that they emphasize much on the religious leader and some places where this leaders were buried was dedicated as shrine. We came across one shrine at Robben Island.

One old man that was manning the place was kind enough to show us one of the first mosque in Bo Kapp. This is after I asked him why all the mosques was locked when we tried to go in the other day. I could not get straight answer from him, but good enough we made way to the mosque, Auwal Mosque (est 1794). It was not even Zohor yet, so nobody was around, but it was not locked. The old man passed us to one young man that is studying inside the mosque. This young man, Sayed, is a Muslim revert, we spoke quite a while and from him I found out about the true Islam in Cape Town.

Although there is a big population of Muslim people in Cape Town, they are still looked down upon by other religion. This is because the Muslim youth is not living the Islamic ways. They partied and drank like nobody's business and some even got involved in crimes. Eidul Fitri is not gazetted as public holiday, but mostly the bosses acknowledge that their Muslim employee need that holiday and it was arranged internally within the organisation.

There is no objection from the government to practise Islam, but the Muslim community is not strong yet, they have no say in the cabinet. Probably that is the reason why it is so hard to find musolla in the shopping centre although the halal certificate is all over their fast food joint.

I wanted to know more and I think I can spend all day talking to that boy, but we planned to go to the Castle of Good Hope before 12pm. So we have to leave.

We got to the castle 5 mins before the ceremony begins. At 10am and 12 pm everyday, there is guard exchange ceremony that took place in the castle. We stayed until the ceremony is over and took a tour on our own (for guided tour, we have to wait and since we are running out of time, we just strolled by ourselves)

We bought lunch at one of the fast food in the area and took taxi home.

We did some last minute packing and managed to say goodbye to the lady in the cafe, Browyn. There were a few nights that we had dinner at this cafe, my favorite was tomato and lentils soup with toast, yummeh..no pictures though as we mostly forgot to bring the camera when we went out for dinner. The white lady is Stacey, the house admin, she helped us with all the day trip, taxi and safari bookings.

The taxi came at 3pm, we have to check in at 4.30pm. The airport is just 30 mins away but since we want to settle some tax refund, we decided to go early.

While waiting for check in, we had drinks at Mugg and Bean as our farewell bid to Cape Town.

It was showing repeat of Spain vs Paraguay.

We departed 2 hours before the Netherland vs Uruguay kick off, when the plane passed by Green Point Stadium, there was an undescribable feeling inside me. Definitely a memorable journey and I highly recommend to all those nature lovers out there, Cape Town is a must visit place, beautiful and will instantly takes your breath away....(macam nyanyi lagu pulak...hehehe..)