Saturday morning, I find myself on the fourth floor of the Zeitz MOCAA museum of contemporary African Art in the Silo district at the Victory & Alfred Waterfront in Cape Town. The building was once a 57-meter tall grain silo constructed in the early 1920s by indentured laborers and, at the time, the second tallest building in Africa, second only to the great pyramid in Giza. Converted into a museum, it opened its doors in 2017.
I’m enjoying the ‘Two Together’ exhibition, built around themes explored by artists from Africa and its diaspora. And although the symbolism, explorations, and interpretations are beyond my limited capabilities of understanding contemporary art, I very much enjoy the paintings, the sculptures, and the other exhibits without a proper understanding.
My phone pings. On the screen, I see I have a message from Judy, Steve’s wife, who is to fly out tomorrow back to the States after being here for two weeks, having gone on a safari and visiting Victoria Falls. It says that Steve had gone to the grocery store on his bicycle, was hit by a car, and fallen off his bike, all shaken up, but he sounded okay over the phone.
The following message, not much later, informed me that Steve was in an ambulance on its way to the hospital, which one she didn’t know, but they had picked her up along the way.
Judy was actually in the ambulance when she texted me, and they were going all the way into Cape Town to a private hospital. Later, I got a text saying they were waiting for a CT scan and an x-ray of his right ankle.
When I returned to the boat, the bicycle was sitting on the deck, leaning against a porthole on the starboard side, returned by the firefighters, the first responders, and the first EMT on the scene, with a mangled rear wheel, but otherwise in decent shape.
By eight o clock, an Uber dropped Steve and Judy off at the marina, and after we managed to get Steve on board with his right ankle in a cast, ankle broken in two places, I heard the whole story.
Steve was on his way to Pick n Pay, a popular supermarket chain just under two kilometers from the marina. He rode his bike on the left-hand shoulder of the road. It’s a wide single-lane road with ample shoulders, where traffic runs at a good clip, and there are no big turns to slow them down.
The mall is on the right-hand side of the road, so Steve had to cross the street to get to the mall’s parking lot entrance. Unfortunately, in a momentary lap of memory, he forgot that he was in a country where people drive on the left, and seeing no traffic in front of him, he swung into the left lane and instantly got hit from behind.
Steve has no memory of the events. He hit the windshield and smashed it. He was out cold for almost half an hour. The CT scan showed no issues, but the x-ray revealed two broken bones in his right ankle. He has a black left eye, and his glasses are scratched beyond useful.
He has to return to the hospital on Monday to see if the breaks are as clean as we hope for. Steve thinks this hospital visit is just a formality, and there was no need for Judy to change her ticket, and he’ll be sailing again next week.
But we know that’s not what is going to happen. A sailboat has to be one of the worst places to be to mend a broken leg. Balancing oneself with two good legs is challenging enough aboard. On one leg, impossible, especially when the other needs to heal. So Steve is going back to the States. He’s not agreeing to it yet, but he will. Judy stands firm, and I’m backing her up all the way. I told Steve I would not sail with him under these circumstances.
So is this the end of my voyage? I don’t think so. Likely I have a couple more weeks in Cape Town and then hopefully jump on Ken’s boat Windsong. I first met Ken in Richards Bay, and when I put the word out that I might be looking for another boat, he invited me to join him and sail to the Azores and possibly on to London, England, his final destination.