Bo Kaap and the Slave Lodge

I'm a bit behind on blogging, and I realized I never blogged about our lunch trip to Bo Kaap (The Cape Malay Quarter).  We had lunch at Bo Kaap Koombi, which means "Above Cape Kitchen." The owner told us about the history behind the name of his restaurant:  because of the political unrest in the past, people were not allowed to meet in groups to talk out of fear that they would be planning sabotage. They only place in which people could freely talk to others was in their kitchens. This restaurant was named because the owners wanted people to feel as though they could gather there and talk openly about whatever was on their minds.

This area is one of the most culturally and historically interesting parts of Cape Town. Many of the inhabitants are decendants of the people from Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Malaysia, who were captured in the 17th and 18th century and enslaved by the Dutch-East Indian Trading Company. Many were Muslims and others were converted to Islam by the Cape Muslim community.

The Cape Malays and their religious leaders played an important role in the development of the language and culture of the Cape colony. The restaurant owner also talked a bit about the evolution of the Afrikaans language -- it evolved as a language of its own through a simplification of Dutch in order for the slaves to be able to communicate with the Dutch and amongst each others, since they all came from different countries and cultures. Educated Muslims were the first to write texts in Afrikaans.



There are three different legends about why the houses are so colorful. My favorite is that a man bought a large can of paint to paint his house and then gave the leftovers to his neighbor. His neighbor added that paint to some other paint and used it on his house.  Voila!  A colorful community!
After lunch we walked around Bo Kaap a little and then headed to the Slave Lodge.  The Iziko Slave Lodge Museum is housed on the premises where thousands of slaves were effectively held prisoner from 1679 onwards.

“We plan to transform the Lodge from a site of human wrongs to one of human rights, to pay tribute to those who have been forgotten, denied and stigmatized.”