Cape Town day 1

My friend Ben Stuart took this trip last year and yesterday commented on my entry, saying something along the lines of "Just wait until you wake up and see Table Mountain in all its glory."

That was the highlight of my morning, indeed. After waking up multiple times at ungodly hours of the morning, convinced that it was time for breakfast, (though I was probably hungry for dinner, since that's what time it was at home)I walked through one of the courtyards outside on my way to brush my teeth and looked up to see the beautifully green and impressive Table Mountain, shrouded in white mist. It was like Mount Ranier, only smaller, flat-topped, without snow and with more green...

We took a field trip to a couple different grocery stores in order to stock up on ingredients for the week's meals. I love grocery stores! We are divided into cooking groups, responsible for a couple meals, and had to buy the food for our meals (none of us have ever had to cook for 25 people..that's a lot of food!). Josh and Kaitlin and I are in a group. A few of you have experienced early morning baking adventures with Kali and Kaitlin, and may remember the monkey bread incident. Pray for the sake of the rest of our group that we somehow acquire top-chef-like skills before Friday.  

We then walked through Cape Town and visited a Holocaust museum. It was interesting because, though I spent part of last summer in Poland visiting Auschwitz, and have been to the Holocaust museum in DC. I've either never seen, or never payed attention to South Africa's involvement in sheltering Jews from Lithuania and Latvia. The museum also drew parallels between the Jewish Holocaust to Apartheid. As I walked through the halls and read the quotes on the wall from Germans and Nazi's proclaiming the superiority of the German people, the inferiority of jews, homosexuals, disabled, the voice of Dr. George Grant from 8th grade history boomed in my ears. 

"Ideas have consequences!"

There was a quote in the museum from Heinrich Heine of the German Post (1797-1856). He remarked that "where one burns books, one will in the end, burn people."

Ideas have consequences. 

The notion that people can be categorized by physical characteristics into fictional "races" began as only an idea. Hitler's thought that Germans could be defined as superior because of the size of their heads and the color of their eyes began as an idea. The notion that black is lesser than white, that English is superior to Dutch - ideas.  

How do these ideas birth hatred and genocide? Is it through the willing acquiescence of individuals? "Not to act," Bonhoeffer exclaims, "is to act. Not to speak is to speak." It was not only Hitler who killed the jews, but the men and women who turned in their Jewish neighbors, and those who simply sat and watched from the comfort of their parlors - those who kept silent.