The three-member panel just could not agree. What had been the very best aspect of the second day in a row spent on the grass banks of Zandvlei in Muizenberg?
”Riding the quads bikes,” was the verdict of Amy (12). Brother Jonathan (10) preferred watching the kites although the pony rides scored high marks. The debate was a gentle one, and how could it be otherwise? The Gilmour family had just returned from the ninth annual Cape Town International Kite Festival. Has anyone ever watched a kite without smiling?
The Cape Mental Health Society organised the Kite Festival as a fund-raiser and conducted a survey of its own. ”We found that people most enjoyed seeing people together without anxiety and tension,” says the society’s development manager Sandra Ellis. ”Kiting really is an unbelievably good fit with our society because it is liberating and uplifting, and everybody can do it.”
Kites also fuel the imagination. The final word from my informal panel came from three-year-old Kelly: ”I would like to go in the kite.”
”In kiting you need flexibility and adaptability,” says Ellis, ”just as in life. You have to cope with setbacks. When your kite falls to the ground, you just have to get out there and fly again.”
”Let’s Fly Together” was the theme of last weekend’s get-together with hundreds of children from 65 primary schools participating in a kite-decorating competition that culminated in kaleidoscopic arches floating in a steady False Bay breeze.
There were free workshops, kite ballets, stunt-kiting demonstrations and the biggest penguin the world has ever seen. Special guests David and Susan Gomberg brought the giant, three-dimensional beast with them from the United States.
David picked up a souvenir penguin bite when he visited the nearby Boulders’ breeding colony and was relieved that Africa’s penguins are somewhat smaller than his 10m tall kite version.
The Gombergs were full of praise for what they saw at Zandvlei. Said David: ”A fine field, a huge and appreciative audience, a beautiful mountain as a backdrop and a good brisk wind: what more could you ask for?”
When the wind changed late on the second day, spectators even saw some unscheduled kite boating as the rain-bearing northwester drove some kiters and their kites into the vlei.
By then the huge crowds that flocked to Muizenberg had seen everything a kite enthusiast could ever hope to see.
Even the ”demolition derby” of kiting, as David Gomberg calls the traditional art of rokkakau kite battles, didn’t detract from the happy atmosphere of the festival. Rokkakau originated 300 years ago in Japan and the object is to bring your opponent’s kite crashing down, either by burning his line or tipping it off balance. Gomberg won the friendly battle.
On Saturday night art kites donated by 11 of South Africa’s top artists were auctioned.
Renowned sculptor Jean Doyle produced a bronze of a woman carrying a kite.
Proceeds from the festival and the auction will fund the protective workshops and life-skills training that the Cape Mental Health Society offers to 450 adults and school clinics for 180 children with intellectual disabilities.