First time surfing! 🏄‍♂️

Today I went surfing for the first time!

Jan had never surfed before either but we were both very excited about trying it out! His flatmate John likes to surf and he's got a car, so he offered to take us to try out the waves at Muizenberg Beach, about 50 minutes away from Stellenbosch.

Waves were apparently relatively weak, but strong enough to learn the basics. After several attempts, we managed to stand up 2 or 3 times for a couple of seconds. You gotta start somewhere! In any case, the trip was worth it just for the beautiful landscape we had in front of us at the beach.

After a couple hours in the (quite cold) water we were ready for a break and some lunch. We went to a local chain called "Tigers Milk" and I ordered an enormous and super tasty burger with double patty and cheese. The surfing lessons were quite exhausting! And I enjoyed every single bite😍🧀

During lunch, John, who was born and raised in Zimbabwe, told us a little about how his family had to emigrate to South Africa after the land reform in that country. They were farmers for many generations and after the reform, all their land was expropriated. He belongs to a white family, so his family's fortune may be regarded by many as a just outcome after centuries of supporting the unequal land distribution that colonialism brought. But, besides the fact that they're income source was taken away I couldn't stop thinking how much good did such a measure do to Zimbabwe's society? How much was gained through this more equal distribution of land? And how much was lost by taking away from many farmers the means to use their knowhow to produce? I don't wanna use this space to elaborate further on this, but it's definetly a question worth asking. And conversating with John about this was definetly a brief lesson about contemporary African social issues as this is a very live discussion in South Africa as well.Weiterlesen