Aunty Gail's After Church Tea & Pastries

My great-grandmother (MA) would make a stop by her daughter, Gail, after church down the road. After attending the early 7:30AM service, Aunty Gail would have tea and doughnut pastries dusted with coconut flakes, known as koeksisters, ready. My mom would pick either my granny up or both of us and make our way through to the waterfront side, listening to the radio. The channel, Heart104.9, forever engrained played old songs from Patti Labella to Ashanti, to sometimes new hits by Sam Smith. A small gesture, but three generations of women were jiving to good music and soaking in the sun and company of one another.

My grandmother's sister, Gail, has lived at Muska place for as long as I can remember and always knew how to entertain. Even though my mom, granny, and I moved to the United States, we still treat 19 Muska Place like home when we visit.

Northpine was known as the garden city and derives from the many pine trees that used to stand tall in the northern suburbs of Cape Town. During apartheid, this area adopted the "best practice" of garden cities or suburbanization for colored people. Most of my family, starting from my grandfather and grandmother, purchased a house here because it was one of the limited options they had, even though they worked in the city center (about 45 minutes away). Their occupations, along with Aunty Gail's, included education and healthcare jobs that required Grade 8 plus two years of high school. When we stop by Aunty Gail's place it is filled with memories and history of the good times of familly bonding and the worst. I am grateful for Aunty Gail being a bonding ageny of the family and always keeping the contact between the cousins, aunty's uncles, and children.