Shame and Joy
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| Final Day 31 October 2026 at the Blockhouse together |
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| Some of the swimmers celebrate 31 Days of cold water seas for Blocktober |
Endings and Beginnings
Today our group of about thirty-nine walkers and cyclists, with Saartjie Baartman staff and children, marked our final walk of Blocktober 2026. Although we may not belong to the same traditions or faiths that offer the holding shapes of rituals for endings or beginnings, we chose to end with a mountain ritual of our own as closure to 31 days of solidarity.
At the start each of us picked up a stone, and carried it to the Blockhouse, in hands, pockets or backpacks. Small, light, heavy, one or many, it didn’t matter. At the Blockhouse, we came together as a group to think about our stone as a symbol for something that we might want to put down. Maybe something that we have been carrying that we don’t need or want anymore, a feeling, a memory perhaps. And to think also of something that we might want to take away with us, at the end of Blocktober. Perhaps we thought about why we’ve been walking, or what Blocktober has shown us.
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| Placing stones at the Blockhouse symbolic of endings and beginnings |
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| Swimmers placed symbolic shells |
The magic of ritual is that it involves a doing, a using of our bodies, publicly. Even if our thoughts remain private we show we are taking part in our action. So we placed our stones on the cairn below the Blockhouse. Path builders and hikers build cairns to tell other hikers which is the safe path to follow. They are little beacons of support, a safety net, a way of looking out for each other that is a solidarity of its own.
My putting down was a memory of my younger self that I shared with a fellow walker two weeks earlier. It had burned in me: walking together made speaking it possible. My story was old, the regret still present. My fellow walker just listened. And then generously, shared a story of her own. I think it is part of what these walks do, can do. Shame seen from a new perspective, integrated, perhaps. Gently. A homecoming.
Joy
I’m sitting with my back facing the wall of the Blockhouse. We’d spoken briefly on the walk up, when she passed with great confidence. She is all of seven years old. She has an open packet of chips in one hand and a stick and a hot dog in the other. I offer to set down her stick.
- Can you take the stones out of my pocket?
I find ten sandy stones and put them carefully on the ground. Now she can sit down. That’s a lot of stones I say.
- Can we paint them even though we don’t have paint?
We contemplate the view of Table Bay and cranes and city and mist while she puts chips slowly into her mouth.
- Can you see the whole world from up here?
Not really, maybe twenty kilometres because of mist.
- How long have you been here?
Do you mean how old I am? I am sixty-four.
I give her back her stick as we begin the descent. The path is gravelly and sand makes it easy to slip on the stones. I am careful where I put my feet between the dongas and the grass. She holds a bag of dried fruit.
- Is it good for you?
It is better for you than six bars of chocolate.
- I haven’t had six chocolates.
I decide it is safer to offer to hold her hand, so she doesn’t slip, and we walk at a happy pace.
- Do you have a dog? She is explaining about German Shepherds when she pulls up abruptly.
Less than two metres away on the road moving into the fynbos is a fat long yellow-bellied snake.
She saw it, I hadn’t. We watch as its tail follows into the green.
I feel my sweaty hand in hers, immensely grateful.
Please donate to support survivors
Support the Saartjie Baartman Centre for Women and Children through the Blocktober fundraising campaign.
