Friday, July 8

I began the day determined to get to the botanical gardens without paying the $20 bus ride that the tour companies charge. If you have ever been to the gardens above UC Berkeley you know exactly what the Capetown gardens look like. Just as in N.California when you sit among the plants looking out towards the bay you see that this place was selected. You feel as if you are there to welcome visitors through the entrance to the bay.

I devised a strategy for cheap transportation. I took the minivan along the base of the mountain northward toward where I would be directly beneath the gardens. That was ninety cents. After exiting the van I turned right and headed up the hill towards the gardens. It took me about ninety minutes with a few minor false turns but eventually I came upon the place.
My walk took me through a wealthy white suburb. I thought I'd show you the way that South Africa whites protect themselves from blacks. They even have devised a way to dispense with black police officers. At the entrance to the suburb is a small white shack housing the office of the private security cops who roam the neighborhood on bikes and cars. A complete society segregated from South African society at large. Hop in your Mercedes (by far the most common vehicle), drive to work, then return home in the same sealed vehicle. No need to interact with blacks except as servants and employees of your company.
Admission was 37 Rand, about five bucks. I spent a few hours touring the place with one nap on a park bench way up at the top. It is not the most exciting botanical place I've ever been--too neat and tidy for that. An army of black gardeners tends the place for the (90%) white visitors.














I've only found two botanic gardens in my travels that really knocked me out, one outside Havana, the other on the Black Sea in Batumi, Georgia. The most 'interesting' of all was probably the Soviet Era gardens in Yerevan, Armenia, which have apparently been neglected for twenty years. I want some wealthy member of the Armenian diaspora to take on the task of renovating that place, which has a wonderful location in the middle of Yerevan. Someone will surely buy up the land and build apartment buildings if someone doesn't act soon.

After the gardens I headed back to my hostel to get dressed for the play, Purgatorio, that I was to attend at the University of Capetown. Again the minivans got me there (and home) cheaply. The play is by Chilean dramatist Ariel Dorfmann. {Advisory: long, dull play review follows}
This claustrophobic work features just two actors, a man and a woman. Each is resident in hell, which in this case is a psychiatric ward. In life they had been man and wife, but now, in the prison-like conditions of the ward, they don't recognize each other. This allows both to alternate playing psychiatrist to each other. We gradually learn the the husband dumped the wife for a younger woman; which inspired the wife to murder their two sons and at least one other member of the family. The husband committed suicide. A cheery pair. The conceit of the story is that each partner knows they can return to life if they can get their former spouse to confess his or her sins in front of a camera operated by whoever is in charge of this place.
Neither succeeds because neither partner is truly remorseful. They both, ultimately, confess that they would do it all over again if they had the chance.
Eugene O'Neill did a much better job with this whole idea in The Iceman Cometh. In O'Neill's scenario hell is a bar and the characters are genuinely remorseful--at least when they are sufficiently tanked--but it all leads to nothing. O'Neill's characters break your heart. You can see that their redemption would be simply; all they'd need to do is get sober. In Dorfmann's play the audience (or at least this audience member) has no identification with the characters. I guess Dorfmann wanted to drive home the futility of the church's remedies for human sin. Confess and your sins will be removed is the church mantra, right? But in modern times we all know enough about psychiatry and the unconscious mind to realize that our confessions are superficial and basically insincere, meant only to last long enough to shield us from hell fire. But Dorfmann's characters are so unlikeable that you end up contented that they will spend their days in endless dialogue, in hell, trying to get the other spouse to repent.
It was worth seeing but not a great play