Cape Town Waterfront at Sunset

Last Tuesday evening, after a full day of touring Cape Town, we drove to the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront just as the sun was setting, and we took these sunset photos...

On Top of the Bottom of the World



Martha at the top of Table Mountain overlooking Cape Town

 We arrived in Cape Town Friday the 23^rd, picked up our new white BMW rental car at the airport and found our way, driving on the right side of the car and left side of the road, to our beautiful timeshare suite at the Peninsula All-Suites Hotel at Sea Point below Lion’s Head Mountain. By the next day, Bob was used to driving the South African way. All we did Friday was check into our suite and visit the V&A Waterfront, where we both had kingklip, served two different ways, at the Cape Town Fish Market restaurant. Wondeful! We went to bed exhausted from our travels and the accompanying jetlag and slept in the next morning until we both awakened at close to 10:00!

The Peninsula is a fabulous hotel in a prime location. Our two-bed, two-bath suite is spacious and comfortable with all the amenities, including an amazing ocean front view from our living room and balcony, right on Beach Road above the Sea Point promenade. The weather has been absolutely perfect with daytime temperatures in the 80’s, cooling down to the low 70’s at night.

The Peninsula All-Suites Hotel at Sea Point

View from our balcony of Atlantic Ocean

On Saturday, we went for a nice drive and visited Bob’s old stomping grounds around the mission home in Pinelands. We even had kingklip and chips for lunch at Mr. Fish. We also made a dry run to the Gugulethu chapel to be sure we knew how to get there for Sunday morning. Then, as we drove through the city to Lion’s Head and started up the mountain to Signal Hill, suddenly the fog rolled in and took away our views.  Although it became somewhat cloudy, the drive through Camp’s Bay past the beaches and into Sea Point was still spectacular. What a beautiful city! Since the evening was overcast and cool, we decided to visit the incredible Canal Walk Mall at Century City, the largest shopping mall in the southern hemisphere, and the most opulent mall we had ever seen, with its elegant detailing, over 400 stores and over 200 restaurants! It rivals the opulence of the mall at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas but is several times larger, and it completely blew Martha away!

On Sunday, we enjoyed a worshipful and sacred day that was all we had hoped for and more. We arrived at the Gugulethu chapel a few minutes early and were greeted by three senior missionary couples, all of whom were also just visiting, who pulled into the car park (parking lot) the same time we did. The first to greet us was Sister Wheeler, who has been following our blog because she has been Joyce’s friend since the 1970’s when they were waiting for their missionaries, who they both married. Elder Wheeler visited Bob & Joyce at our home when they left on their mission 18 months ago. The Wheelers are serving in Port Alfred (about a 9-hour drive away), a branch that Bob organized 9 years ago, and are in Cape Town on some kind of mission business. They left before the block was over, so we didn’t get a photo with them . Another couple is on their way home after completing their mission in Grahamstown, and the third couple was there to give a self-reliance presentation to the branch during the third hour. The AP’s (assistants to the president) were also visiting the branch and the four assigned elders were there.

As we walked into the chapel, Thirsly (housekeeper at the mission home for 25 years and now 9 mission presidents) was there to greet us, along with her daughter Sindiswa (about age 24?) and her beautiful granddaughter. We had a very tender reunion, and they were so happy to meet Martha. Sindiswa was so happy to see Bob that she burst into tears and had to excuse herself! The branch president, President Nkukwani , who also remembered the Egans, was especially kind to welcome us, and was very impressive in his calling.

When the meeting started at 9:00, there were only about 30 people there and 14 were missionaries. But by the time the sacrament was passed there were close to 70 in attendance. Thirsly led the music and Sam Nkowane (our former AP who is married to Thirsly’s daughter Bongi) played the keyboard.  We noticed Cebo, Thirsly’s 18-year old son, at the sacrament table, all grown up. He hadn’t turned 12 when Bob left in 2008. Bongi is in the stake Young Women presidency, and she was a couple of hours away visiting the Paarl Ward.

We thoroughly enjoyed the sacrament meeting and Sunday School. The final speaker and Sunday School teacher was Brother Byron of the stake high council, and he was exceptional. Bob went to the Priesthood quorum lesson by Brother Masikwana and Martha went to the self-reliance presentation with the rest of the Relief Society. After the 3-hour block of meetings, we stayed for a baptismal service for 3 new converts, which was a very special, spiritual experience, and Thirsly’s daughter Bongi joined us after the baptism. We had a great reunion and took lots of photos.



Thirsly (left), her son Cebo (center), daughter Bongi and son-in-law Sam Nkowane

Sindiswa and her baby with Martha



Gugulethu missionaries and their baptisms (two women
in center in orange and brown dress and yellow jacket)

 

Tihabanelo DiHolo, one of Bob’s “powerful” SACTM RM’s is also in the Gugulethu Branch and was there with his two beautiful daughters. Bob hadn’t seen him since 2005, as he was one of the first elders to leave after they got here almost 10 years ago. He was the missionary who always used the word “powerful” to describe things he was impressed with or touched by.

The weather Sunday was unbelievably sunny and beautiful, so we drove to Lion’s Head and Signal Hill after the church meetings and saw some breathtaking views of this beautiful city, the Bay, the Waterfront, the downtown skyline, the beaches, the mountains and all the trees. Cape Town is even more beautiful than Bob could remember or than Martha had ever anticipated!

 

Cape Town and Table Bay as Seen from Signal Hill

We drove to the mission home a little before 5:00 Sunday for an open house that was planned for us. It is amazing how little the mission home has changed since our drastic remodeling in 2006. Sister Merrill took us on a tour of the place. Bob felt right at home and felt a ton of memories flooding over him. He knew a lot more about the home than the Merrills, who just got here 7 months ago. The guests at the open house said it felt very natural to see Bob here in the home where he lived and hosted events for 3 years. Eight returned missionaries who served under Bob were at the open house, most with wives and children, and about 20 local members (stake president, bishops, etc.) were there to greet us and visit, along with all Thirsly’s family. We had a fun time, lots of great visits and reminiscing, and felt honored and welcomed. Martha felt very much a part of everything, and everyone loved her! Photos will be posted later.

On Monday through Thursday we were tourists and saw all the tourist sights of Cape Town. In Martha’s words: Every single day was a spectacular day! Monday we drove along False Bay to Fish Hoek and Simonstown and to the southern tip of Africa at Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope, hiked to the lighthouse and saw where the Atlantic and Indian Ocean currents merge, had a wonderful meal at the Two Oceans restaurant. On the way, we spent time with the African penguins in their beach colony and closely observed a baboon family that appeared along the roadside. Photos will be posted later. We came back around Chapman’s Peak and Hout Bay to Victoria Road and Sea Point. We finished our evening with gelato cones at the Canal Walk Mall.

Tuesday and Wednesday we picked up the red double-decker, hop-on hop-off, sightseeing buses just outside our hotel door and had beautiful sunny summer weather to observe the V&A Waterfront, including a canal cruise, the immense flea market at Greenmarket Square, a tour of the city bowl and all its historical sights, forts and castles, took the cable car to the top of Table Mountain, overlooking the city and the Cape Peninsula, drove above and around Camp’s Bay and the Clifton beaches, toured Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens,  and saw everything in between, beautifully narrated, from a perfect vantage point atop the second deck of an open-air bus. Photos will be posted later.

Thursday we drove to Bloubergstrand and looked across Table Bay at the city skyline and Table Mountain and had our photo taken, then we drove back along the sea coast to Hout Bay and visited World of Birds, where we spent a whole hour interacting with about 30 squirrel monkeys in the Monkey Jungle. Martha had one squirrel monkey climb on her head. Four mother monkeys were carrying their new babies on their backs, even nursing them, while flying from branch to branch through the trees.

 

Then we drove back through the beautiful greenery of the Constantia wine country to the V&A Waterfront for one last visit and meandered through the impressive craft stores in the Watershed (which replaced the former red shed and blue shed in 2012). Temperatures did get into the low 90’s Wednesday and Thursday, but cooled down comfortably after sunset.

We really have had a chance to see the world’s most beautiful city in its very best light. When asked to describe Cape Town after a week’s visit, Martha said she would probably best describe it as San Diego meets Monterey meets Hawaii. It’s like the best of all three. She is also very impressed by the unique diversity of Cape Town, not just racially and ethnically, but how the wealthy live in sprawling, gorgeous mansions not far from the small, humbleshacks and shanty towns of the distressingly poor.

We ate kingklip at Cape Town Fish Market and Mr. Fish, chateaubriand steak at the Cattle Baron, langoustine prawns from Mozambique at the Two Oceans, and samples from 15 different African countries and cultures at The Africa Café with President & Sister Merrill, among other dinners and lunches. All delicious meals!



Butterflied langoustines from Mozambique served with all their eye
and appendages at the Two Oceans Restaurant at Cape Point

It took Bob just a few hours to get comfortably back in the mode of driving on the right side of the car and the left side of the road, and he hasn’t needed the GPS at all, as he clearly remembers his way around and is really taking it all in.  Petrol (gasoline) prices seem to be dropping here as well as at home. Bob is pretty sure petrol cost over $5 a gallon seven years ago when they were here. Today they’re advertising 11 rand per liter, which comes out to $4.31 per gallon, which is still more than double US prices.

Tomorrow (Friday) we’re off on a 5-hour drive along the Garden Route, around the Cape to the Indian Ocean side, for the weekend, and our next posting will probably be next week from Johannesburg.

 

 

 

 

Ethiopian Food and Music

The music, dancing and food we enjoyed in Ethiopia Thursday night were most unusual. Zoom in on the instruments in this photo of the band and you'll begin to see what we mean. They are all string instruments (except for the drums) but are unlike any stringed instruments we have ever seen!  The drums were all tom-toms, no snare. The music sounds very East Indian, not at all like other African music. The singing is very haunting and different, and the dancing emphasis is on the shoulders and the head, as opposed to the feet or hips. Very different.

 

 

As far as the food... Ethiopians eat injera (a thin sourdough flatbread, like a tortilla but spongy, made from teff flour, pronounced in-JEER-uh) three meals a day and use no eating utensils.  And every meal begins with a coffee ceremony with burning incense on the table and a hand-washing ceremony, where the host pours water from a pitcher into a bowl, along with soap, so each person, one at a time, around the table, gets his/her hands washed.

 

At the restaurant, following the coffee and hand-washing ceremonies, they brought us two covered pans of injera (see below) and set them on very low tables, near our feet.

 

 

The basket-like covers were taken off to reveal round pans of injera, 20 inches in diameter plus rolls of injera, both white and brown, that you can unroll like gauze. You eat only with your right hand using pieces of injera, torn from the round piece or the roll, to pick up bites of the entrees, called wat (pronounced WOT).



 

Then they spoon the entrees, different kinds of wat, onto the injera. Wat is made by simmering chopped red onions in a pot, adding vegetable oil and spices such as berbere or turmeric and vegetables and/or meat to form various types of stews. The meat could be beef (sega wat), chicken (doro wat), goat or lamb (beg wat), fish (asa wat), etc. or the wat could be vegetarian, using lentils, chick peas or other vegetables.

 

 

Among the most popular wat seemed to be the burbere (prounounced like BUR-bury) with ground beef (the red one in the center of the injera, which tasted like it was heavily seasoned with chili powder). To the left and right of the red one (the yellow and orange) were chick peas in different spices, the one on the right being called shiro, and around the injera were various other meat and vegetable wats. We all ate from the same pans using injera between the thumb, index and middle fingers of our right hands to pick up the wat. There's much more to it than this, but you get the idea. Some wats were spicier than others, some were tasty and some less so, at least to our palates! It was a filling and satisfying meal.

 

 

 

As we were eating, the music from the nine regions of Ethiopia, continued, with 3 male and 3 female dancers in colorful costumes and different female and male singers adding the vocals. We were there over two hours and had only heard music from 5 of the 9 regions, the 5th one alone had to last close to a half-hour! Very fun and fascinating, but our group was pretty tired of the music and dancing by then and felt like we had all put in a long day. So we went back to the Hotel Sidra for final visiting and goodbyes.

 

 

 

Our quick visit to Ethiopia was an incredible experience and we can't believe how much we saw in about 36 hours. We survived the jetlag and enjoyed being with Bob's sister and her husband, who will soon complete their mission and return home Tuesday. His brother Rick left a day or two after we did.

 

From Addis Ababa, we flew 5 hours back to Johannesburg, had a 2-hour layover, and flew two more hours to Cape Town at the southern tip of Africa. Our next posting will be from Cape Town.

Family Reunion in Ethiopia

It's Friday and we're flying to Cape Town via Johannesburg, passing back across the equator, over Uganda, Kenya, Zambia and Zimbabwe. We just flew by Mount Kilimanjaro. Five more hours in the air followed by a 2-hour layover and a 2-hour flight. 

Mt. Kilimanjaro, tallest peak in Africa, from plane window

Yesterday we woke up to NO hot water, so we had really quick cold showers, and we still had no Internet access. Bob's phone SIM card was accepted this morning and the pin code worked, but there was no cell phone service available and the hotel's Wi-Fi password still didn't connect. 

We met Joyce and Bob for breakfast at 8:30, then drove through Addis and the chaotic traffic for an hour northwest to Debre Zeyit (DEB-ra ZET), where we visited their home, their new chapel and met many of the members and missionaries they work with and have become so close to. Can you imagine a city of 9 million people with no traffic lanes and almost no (maybe 5 or 6) traffic lights? We had lunch at the beautiful Kuriftu Resort on one of the many lakes near Debre Zeyit.

Lunch at the
Lake View Restaurant at the Kuriftu Resort outside Debre Zeyit

It was really an amazing and memorable day to observe the Ethiopian people and culture firsthand. We can't even begin to describe all that we saw and experienced in one day! Here are 2 more photos...

At Lake Bishoftu, Pyramid Hotel



Meetinghouse for Debre Zeyit Branch,
built about a year and a half ago

Luckily, a new expressway opened in September between Addis and Debra Zeyit, allowing us to leave behind the crowded, chaotic, slow and bumpy roads for a very modern, uncrowded  freeway for the last half of the trip, at 120 km/hr (80 miles per hour), so we made the whole trip in about an hour, despite a bumper-to bumper start. What a remarkable difference between the old and new roads! The Chinese built the freeway with state-of-the art tools and technology and cheap African labor. 

Today is the third day of the most sacred Ethiopian holiday, the 3-day Timkat celebration of the ark of the covenant. So the country was decked out in a very festive way with green, yellow and red flags and banners everywhere, especially around the Christian orthodox churches with their multiple onion-domes. 

Every Christian Orthodox Church has a replica of the ark of the covenant in their "holy of holies" and they bring them out once a year at Timkat in January. Ethiopians claim possession of the original ark of the covenant from Solomon's temple. 

Ethiopia is very much a Christian country with Jewish ties and traditions and claims to have had Christianity longer than anywhere else in Africa or outside the Middle East, dating back to before AD 400!  Here you see Christian churches and Muslim mosques side by side. 

Ethiopia is the only African country never colonized by Europeans. As a result, they have adapted more slowly to the conventions of the rest of the world, or have refused to adapt at all. For example, they have never adopted the modern calendar or clock, but have kept the same calendar and clock used for thousands of years. 

The Ethiopian calendar has 12 months of exactly 30 days each, plus a 13th month with just 5 days (6 days every fourth year) and is almost eight years behind our calendar, so we're in May 2007 now. Christmas falls on our January 7th, and their new year starts on our September 24th. 

The Ethiopian clock is six hours ahead of (or behind) us, as 12:00 am starts at dawn (6:00 am by our clocks) and 12:00 pm is at dusk (6:00 pm) and night goes from their 12:00 pm to 12:00 am or from 6pm to 6am on our clocks, which makes a lot of sense. 

Bob's and Joyce's Ethiopian driver's licenses show their birth dates according to the Ethiopian calendar, and they announce and hold church meetings on Ethiopian time!

The dominant language of Ethiopia is Amharic, which has it's own very unique alphabet. So even in Africa, Ethiopia is unique. We were blown away by how much Amharic Bob & Joyce know and speak (and even read and write). 

Ethiopia is in the dry season now, so it's not very green at all. In fact, the mountains and cities are quite brown and drab. Although we were at elevations of almost 8,000 feet high all day, temperatures were very warm, probably in the high 80's, but it was pleasantly cool in the evenings. 

Bob's brother Rick is president of COEEF (Children of Ethiopa Education Foundation), a non-profit humanitarian NGO (non-government organization) committed to improving education of children in the country. He and his wife Carla are also in the country but were with a group down visiting the southern Kara and Hamar tribes in their remote villages on Wednesday. They left by 7 in the morning but didn't join us until almost 6:00 at night because they lost a few hours because their van had four flat tires and they only carried three spares (and no jack, so they had to use rocks)!

By 6:15 Rick, Joyce and Bob were together at our hotel, the Sidra Hotel, in Addis for the first reunion of the three surviving siblings of the J. Benson Egan family in 2 1/2 years! And who would have ever guessed back then that it would be in Ethiopia?!!

We went to dinner with Rick & Carla and a couple of their staff at a restaurant that combines traditional Ethiopian food (injera with wot) and traditional Ethiopian music, singing and dancing from all nine regions of the country, playing musical instruments that were unlike anything we had ever seen, and dancing very unique dances that stress shoulder and head movement. What an amazing cultural experience!!




The restaurant in Addis Ababa where we ate injera and wot
and were entertained with Ethiopian musicians and dancers

Photos and descriptions of the Ethiopian food we ate and the musicians and dancers will be in our next posting.

Tour of Area Offices and Off to Ethiopia

 

Tuesday, our first evening in Africa, we landed almost an hour early at 6:12 pm and breezed right through baggage claim, passport control and customs. The flight from Atlanta was barely 14 hours, so the whole trip, including our layover in Atlanta was only 19 hours. We were both pleasantly surprised at how comfortable we were and how fast the time went... not nearly as difficult as we had projected.

Elder and Sister Heaton, who we are replacing, met us at the international terminal in a kombi (minivan) owned by the Area, that was just big enough for the four of us and our 4 checked bags and 4 carry-ons. They drove us to our (now their) flat at Duke's Court and showed us around. It is much larger and nicer than we anticipated. It will do just fine. Then they took us across the hall to the Barton's 2-bedroom apartment, where we spent the night. Elder and Sister Barton are great! He is the Area Medical Advisor, and they were very helpful getting us settled and will take care of our luggage (all but one bag and one carry-on) the next two weeks while we are traveling. The accommodations were very nice!

Martha woke up at 2:00 am and Bob was awake by 2:30, just as our hosts had predicted, and we were both wide awake. We talked for awhile, then lay in bed, mostly awake, until 6:00, when we got up, showered and dressed.

The Bartons had breakfast for us, cereal and toast, and we left at 8:30 with the Heatons for the office next to the temple on Jubilee Road. We spent the morning touring the area offices and meeting everyone and had our picture taken in front of the temple.

The first thing we did was interrupt the Area Presidency meeting. Elder Cook, the Area President, and his counselors, Elders Ellis and Hamilton of the Seventy seemed genuinely excited to have us here and we're very kind. They seemed to know all about us. Elder Cook told Martha he had some ideas of the ways she could best contribute and told her she had been discussed in the last two presidency meetings. The Executive Secretary, Elder Jones and Director of Temporal Affairs, Elder Frischnecht, we're also in the meeting. They made us both feel very welcome and needed.

Among the office workers we met, one was one of Bob's Cape Town missionaries, one was the wife of one of his missionaries, one was the mother of one of his missionaries, one was the wife of a mission president he served with, one was the daughter of a former Cape Town mission president from Port Elizabeth who also served with his wife as MTC president and temple president in Johannesburg while Bob was mission president, and on and on. Lots of connections. And Martha was hugged and welcomed royally by everyone, especially the sisters in Public Affairs who both want her to start working on projects with them immediately.

We got our church lds.org email addresses established and got a SIM card from IT for Bob's iPhone, then headed to the airport. But Bob's phone wasn't able to be activated for 24 hours.

While at the Johannesburg airport, walking to Gate A4 for our flight to Ethiopia, we happened upon three young African missionaries in their suits and name tags who looked very handsome but also very lost and bewildered.

They were all 3 from Mozambique and had somehow missed their connecting flight to São Paulo, Brazil and had no clue what to do and were told they had to have money to reschedule their flights. They were on their way to the MTC there because they were going to Portuguese speaking missions in Brazil.

The Joburg MTC is English-only and the Ghana MTC is English and French. The colonial language in Mozambique, Angola and the Cape Verde Islands is Portuguese.

Luckily, Elder Heaton had given us his business card with his phone number, and we had just gotten Martha's phone service activated at Vodacom in Killarney Mall (the SIM card and 100 minutes of calls cost us $10 US), so we called Elder Heaton from Martha's phone and gave him the three elders' names and told him the situation. He got right on it, called the travel department, who got them on the next flight out, and sent someone to accompany them and pay any fees with a credit card.

We landed a half-hour early at Addis Ababa (ADD-is AAH-buh-bah)  the capital of Ethiopia, at 8:20 (5-hour flight and we lost an hour), but we had to wait on the plane a half-hour because the jetway and the bus to the terminal weren't there to meet us. We were quite tired.  After 19 hours of flying the day before, we had flown another 2500 miles (like from L.A. to New York). Finally, the jetway appeared and we took the bus to the terminal. It was significantly cooler in Addis than Joburg, maybe because we had crossed the equator again and were back in winter.

As we approached passport control, suddenly the line backed up and stopped. Then we realized they were merging the whole crowd into two lines, where 2 Ethiopian officials in white lab coats and face masks took everyone's' temperatures, checking for fevers, we guess, because of the Ebola virus.  It took almost another hour to wait in line for our visas ($50 apiece), go through passport control, baggage claim and customs.

It was past 9:30 before we exited the terminal and met Bob's sister Joyce and her husband Bob at the end of the ramp. They were just one week away from finishing their mission and returning to Arizona. We visited with Bob & Joyce at the hotel until after 11:00 in our room, a very nicely appointed hotel room, nice bed and great pillows. We both woke up at 4:55 (3:55 South Africa time). Martha thought it was 5:55 because her iPhone was still an hour behind when we went to bed the night before, but it somehow caught up to Ethiopia time overnight.

Before the call to prayer for Muslims, an eerie middle eastern chant, was amplified across the city at 5:30, we had already been entertained by barking and howling dogs and roosters, and we were wide awake and ready for our Ethiopian adventure.

On Our Way!

Today's the day! We're at the SLC International Airport awaiting our departure to Atlanta, the first leg of a 20-hour journey to the other side of the world. We're on our way! Erik drove us and all our luggage (6 bags) to the airport and Christian and his family met us here.

Saying goodbye to Christian and Katie
and their boys at the SLC Airport.

Heading up to security, where we both got to go
quickly through the TSA Pre-check line!

Our son Erik arrived here from Dallas on Thursday and spent the weekend at our home. His daughter Amanda and her husband, Nick Ritter, also stayed here Saturday night. Our three out-of-town daughters (Emily from San Antonio, Betsy from Idaho and Kelly from Arizona) surprised us by flying in for Saturday and Sunday, and Martha's two out-of-town sisters (CJ from Arizona, and Elizabeth from Washington state) also surprised us. So Martha's four sisters and 6 of our 10 children were here to hear us speak in church on Sunday and for our setting apart by our stake president Sunday afternoon. Martha's sisters provided an unbelievable brunch in between and sandwiches after the setting apart.

We were set apart by our stake president, Dan England, CEO of C.R. England Trucking. After being set apart, we put on our missionary nametags.



Martha and her sisters then had a Skype call with their parents in St. George where they wished their dad a Happy 85th Birthday (on January 22nd). You can see by the photo how happy they were to make that call.

Martha and her sisters Skyping with
their parents. Left to right, Virginia
Whitby, CJ Theobald, Martha Egan,
Brenda Nibley and Elizabeth Sorensen

That's all we have time to post right now, but maybe we can add more photos from the plane, on our layover in Atlanta, or when we arrive tomorrow night in Johannesburg. We're so excited to be on our way!

Africa, here we come!!