Cape Town — A home office is a lovely thing. It is quiet and peaceful – and then again it is quiet and perhaps a little boring.
The Africa Tech Festival – with a free pass! – seemed like the best opportunity I’d had in a long time to walk away from my too-quiet desk.
I don’t know how many people attended the festival, but I can say there were lots of them, all wandering around the vastness of the Cape Town International Convention Centre and talking earnestly in coffee shops and attending sessions and running exhibition stands and holding signs that said they were there to help and riding escalators and drinking coffee as they hustled and looking bored in a security uniform and taking pictures with a picture of Table Mountain in the background.
In the middle of all this, I wandered smiling, taking in everything I saw and heard like a whale filters food as it swims in the ocean.
Against the background of a constant low roar of human voices, I saw all the kinds of African people that you might expect to see at a tech conference and some that you might not have expected.
Take for instance the couple who looked like farmers, stout of build and wide of girth, proudly wearing their conference badges. And holding hands as they proceeded down the hallway.
They did not look like tech festival goers at all – and yet there they were.
As were many, many men in suits, all sharp of eye and keen in manner – and some desperate faces at empty exhibition stands too.
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Also, many women in the equivalent of the business suit – tailored skirt, tailored shirt and some of the highest heels I have ever seen. Acres of expertly applied make-up. And one person wearing that tailored skirt with socks and platform shoes.
One woman, perched on a ledge at the entrance, had taken her gold high heels off and replaced them with gold flip-flops. Sensible.
I heard a large man tell someone on the phone that they would “maak ‘n plan’ (the unofficial South African motto: we make a plan, no matter the circumstances).
I saw fewer people in traditional clothing than I thought I would, but I saw exactly as many young men with long hair and wearing T-shirts as I thought I would.
I saw some friends too – and made some new connections.
I learned a lot, talked a lot, laughed a lot.
The best kind of African experience there is, I thought.
Renee Moodie runs Safe Hands, a writing and editing agency .
