Holi Moly

The Post-Graduate and International Office of Stellenbosch University offers pretty regular excursions for international students at a considerable discount.  One of the trips they were offering was to Cape Town on a Saturday for what was called the Holi Festival (we called it the Holi One Festival for some reason).  This is the Hindu festival of colors in honor of spring and it is celebrated is by throwing colored powder at each other.

South Africa has a small, but still rather significant number of Hindus and people of Indian descent living in the country.  The reason for this is when the British became the colonial rulers of South Africa, they abolished slavery.  Despite this, there was still a shortage of cheap labor so the decuded to import Indians has indentured servants.  Fun fact - according to Wikipedia (so I’m not that sure how reliable the statistic is), Kwazulu-Nata (which is on the easter coast of South Africa) has one of the highest populations of Indians outside of India.

I was under the impression that we were going to be celebrating in Cape Town’s “India Town/Little India” with actual Indians and I would learn something about the festival, its history, Indian culture and come back with some nuggets of wisdom.  Instead, the festival kind of just seemed like a giant dance party.  So here’s how it worked.

Step 1:  Wear white - the colored powder obviously sticks to your clothes (and then kind of washes out)

Step 2:  Take a bus to Cape Town

Step 3:  Arrive at the Festival which was just an enclosed square near the Castle of Good Hope

Step 4:  Purchase 5 bags of neon colored powder for R100 (≈$10)

Step 5:  Wait around until the hour when there was a count down

Step 6:  Throw handfuls of powder into the air or at other people when the countdown reaches 0

Step 7:  Wait around some more - but fill your time hanging out, checking out the couple of vendors in the square, getting delicious food at the Middle Eastern Bizarre, dance!

Although the day wasn’t as educational as I thought it was going to be, it was wicked fun!  We started off looking beautiful.  All the colors stood out really nicely on my white shirt, but by the end of the night, everyone looked like we had just rolled around in the dirt - all the colors just blended together and turned brown.  When I took a shower, the water looked kind of like mud and it took a few shampoos to really get everything out.  Even with this, I was still finding orange powder in my ears for a few days after.  We spent most of the day just hanging out waiting for the next hour to come so we could throw powder, but as it started to get dark, the crowd around the stage grew and everyone was just dancing around and occasionally throwing colors as people.  It was a really fun atmosphere because total strangers would come up to you and day “you need some pink,” then throw some pink on your shirt and then run off to do that to someone else.  Everyone was just very friendly.  The best part was when on the hour, everyone threw powder into the air at the same time.  Even in the daylight, it was like being covered by a giant colorful blanket for a few seconds until the dust started to fall to the ground.  The pictures show the colors way better than my words - so enjoy!

"Before" - I didn't get a picture of us before we got powder on us - but close enough.

We left for a while to get lunch at a Middle Eastern Food Bizarre.  This place is great.  I got naan, humus, pita, and around 4 different kinds of salads all for about R15 - a little under $2.  I like this picture because of the contrast between us and the black wall.  While we were walking around the city, a couple people just gave us funny looks (I don't blame them - look at us, we're pretty silly looking), but a few others seemed really interested in why we were so colorful.

Someone took this from on top of someone else's shoulders.  Although I'm not that short, I definetly spent a lot of time looking at the backs of peoples heads, so towards the end of the night, I got on the shoulders of one of my friends who's really tall and it was cool to look around because you could see everyone and the scenery of Cape Town in the background.  The location was really nice because we were in the middle of this big square, but in the background was Table Mountain which lit up, the building that Mandela gave his famous speech from when he was released from prison and the rest of the city.  The contrast between the buildings, not only in Cape Town, but really all over, and then the landscape has been a fascinating part of seeing the country.

Neil from Alaska and Sarah from Pennsylvania.

The colors are starting to mush together - what used to be beautiful shades of neon - now just gross brown.