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With me tucked into World Traveler Class, the BA flight flew over the Mediterranean Sea and crossed the coast of Northern Africa. Some four hundred years later, I was on a journey that would take me back to the continent from which my dark-skinned ancestors first came. Though my ancestors had been given a free trip to the West, I was paying as I partly retraced their steps. Crammed into the cabin of this BA Boeing 747, I was thankful that the crew was modern and didn't toss anybody over the side the way they might have on that old outward journey - four centuries ago.

Eleven hours and 7,200 miles later, the 747 touched down at Cape Town Airport.  I - for the first time ever - set foot on the continent of Africa. The concrete ramp felt no different from any of the other airport ramps that I've stood on in other continents. Tired and in need of a good stretch, I felt no great surge of emotion. I thought, however, that my African 'brothers' would welcome this Bermudian returnee with open arms.

The uniformed 'brother' assigned to welcome me - who actually turned out to be a female Immigration Officer who 'looked like me' - took my proffered passport.  She checked my itinerary to make sure that though coming, I would also be leaving.  She then glued a South African visa to a page in my passport, banged down an authoritative stamp, and gave me back my passport whilst uttering: "Welcome to South Africa". That visa permitted me - a returnee - to stay, but only for a short while.  

So there I was. A black Bermudian. descendant of Africans who had been captured, sold, transported, and then sold again.  I, a scatterling of Africa, was now back on the continent, the vast land, from which - somewhere - my African forebears had started their journey into what turned out to be a long dark future, that only began to turn bright in the last fifty years.

Rainbow nation

Collected by our South African tour guide, we were driven into Cape Town. Along the way, we passed outlying townships made up of thousands of small houses intersected by dirt roads, and serviced by rows of toilets standing at the end of each street. We went on to our accommodation at the Table Bay Hotel. From our eighth floor room, looking just West of North, we could see Robben Island, the site of one of the prisons that once held Nelson Mandela.

Robben Island reminded me of South Africa's recent past when Apartheid was the rule. In passing the outlying townships, I 'd been impressed by their size. Their size reminded me that the bad old Apartheid regime had to employ massive state power in order to try to make an unworkable arrangement work within a population that was actively and passively, resisting the imposition of this grossly unfair and unwise policy.

With my wife, I had come to South Africa as part of my retirement gift from our children Laurion and Sassy. My particular desire was to gain as much insight as I could into the political and social history of this new 'Rainbow Nation'; to see something of the real life and culture of the people of South Africa; and to visit the battlefields of Isandlwana and Rorke's Drift where Brit soldiers and Zulu warriors had fought and died.  

Three days later, having toured the Cape Town area, we flew to the 'battlefields' area of KwaZulu Natal.We'd planned three nights at Isibindi Zulu Lodge. Spending the first night in a thatched Zulu house, but one with all modern conveniences, in this private 4,000 acre eco-reserve, I woke, that first morning, to the silent red-gold glow of an African dawn.  

I rose and walked out onto the wooden deck. I stood and let the rising sun's rays warm me. I knew that this same sun, whirling in its unchanging orbit, shining hot and bright for hundreds of years, had once shone its rays on my forebearers. That sun had woken them as it had woken me. It had started their days, and, by its setting, had fashioned their nights. Their African sun was now bathing and warming my brown Bermudian body.

For the first time, I felt as if a part of my Bermudian self might belong here.

(More about South Africa later...)[[In-content Ad]]

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