Mother Mountain, Mother Earth, Mother City

I like to walk through the Deer Park area below Table Mountain. Just below Tafelberg Rd is a big flat granite rock. This is called Platteklip and the Platteklip stream flows over it all year round. 

 Even in the hot Cape Town summer there is a constant flow of water polishing the rock.

I sit down next to the stream and watch the water rushing down to the city.

For me this is a magic place, if I listen long enough, I can hear the giggles and laughter of Khoi San children playing. I see them letting little pieces of grass race over the rock. This must have been their paradise for thousands of years. Water all year around and a valley sheltered from the wind.

The big Mother mountain in the backdrop with its porous sandstone acts like a sponge keeping all the rainwater. This life-giving fluid is seeping down until it gets to the underlying layer of granite.

Here it forms streams and springs at the foot of the mountain.

The round, flat, solid rock is like the round belly of mother earth. Water is running down through her valley. Nourishing all of nature below.

In the old days, the stream was jumping over rocks, flowing through a grassy plain, maybe forming a vlei before seeping through the sand into the sea at what is today Strand Street.

All of this was like paradise for the ancient people and it was this paradise that attracted the sailors and merchants to replenish the provisions for their ships on the way to India.

The Mother City was born.

Merchants and colonizers took possession of this gift from Mother Mountain and Mother Earth.

At first it was used to wash their linen at the wash houses and water the company garden. Later Cape Town had canals between the houses like Amsterdam. 

As the city grew the canals became more and more dirty from the effluent and floating rubbish.

Eventually they were covered, and the city grew over its life-giving waters.

This is a history of a few hundred years of possession. The feminine life-giving force gets contaminated and is covered up. Its true nature forgotten. Paradise is lost.

I sit and listen to the stream and honor the mothers and their gifts.

The mothers are still here. It is time to uncover them again.