Sweet and Sour
No, this is not a post about Chinese food. I’ll explain later.
I had another professional day with municipal staff, but this time of the small metro area of Overstrand which includes Hermanus where we are staying. This is a quaint seaside community that has just tens of thousands of residents during much of the year, but also has on the order of several hundred thousand people living in it during the summer months. So, the city government has to essentially plan infrastructure and services for the highest peak even though that capacity is only needed for a couple months of the year. Right now the town is fairly quiet and easy to navigate. We were able to sit in on what amounted to a mayor & council study session, followed a short while later by the actual mayor & council meeting. Quite a bit more of the work of the council is done in committees (they have approximately 20 council members as well as a city manager), so the meetings are somewhat a formality but enter many of their previous decisions regarding zoning and developments, major purchases and project expenditures, personnel matters, and the like into the record. I was struck by the highly professional staff combined with a very strong elected body, which research and compile very thorough results, projections and the like, and then take decisive action and move on. As with any community, I’m sure they are doing quite a lot, and have a lot more that they could or should do; but they seem to be doing a great job and by the time most matters get to the full council they have been fairly thoroughly vetted by the staff, council and community at large. We also toured several city public works, learning about a major road building project to allow much of the city-center traffic to bypass the area and allow for pedestrianization of the city’s coastal business district. Residents, businesses, and government seem very excited about the prospect of having more parking available, less through traffic, and better pedestrian-friendly amenities near their restaurants, shops, tourist amenities and the like. A lot of their challenges and projects sound very similar to Tucson, only everyone seems genuinely excited to see the city center being revitalized, even as continued growth continues around the edge of town.
One of the final stops, for both Barb and I was to one of the City of Hermanus waste transfer stations. This also happened to be right next door to a recycling center; the City does not presently have an actual recycling contract, so the bags of recycled items are left for a small group of women to sort informally, and then sell to the recycling center next door. I found out later that my other teammates Randy, Sarah, and Jenny also visited another landfill in a city nearby where even children were working alongside their moms (and to a much, much lesser extent, dads). Needless to say, none of them were as thrilled with the sickeningly sweet and sour smell of these sites as I was! It was, though, an interesting face to face visit with the reality that here people are willing to scavenge through the trash of others to eke out a very basic existence. Reality isn’t as pretty or as pleasant-smelling as it seems. Our trash, and the few recyclables we did separate, will likely be making their way to these ladies’ hands to sort… truly bittersweet to think of the smiling face that was looking at me as I watched her stooped over her pile of cardboard, and the other women as well.
We are presently being hosted by the Hermanus Rotary Club. I have the joy of staying with Jaco Coetzee and his wonderful wife, young daughter and son (who are just a bit older and younger than my son!). It is very nice being in a family home with kids running around, laughing, playing, crashing into things and crying, and their various dogs, cats, baby bok, and hamsters meandering through the house. Yes, a baby bok (buck), that is being rehabilitated. Imagine my surprise, but Jaco is a veterinarian so I guess I shouldn’t have been totally surprised. It is nice to feel comfortable, as if I am at my own, middle-class home for the first time since I've been here. We had a nice homemade chicken & potatoes with gravy dinner tonight, some good home cooked food for the weary traveler. All of this reminds me of how much I very much miss my wife and young son, but it is nice to be able to have a sense of normalcy for the first time on this trip. This town also seems beautifully ordinary with a mix of incomes, industries and the like. I love it!
My best to all,
BJ
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