On the weekend of the 3 & 4th November, Muizenberg’s skies were brightened by a collection of local and international kites of all shapes and sizes at the 18th annual Cape Town International Kite Festival.
The last time I’d been to the festival was way back in 2003, so I was looking forward to checking it out again. The event is Africa’s largest kite festival, and is hosted and managed by Cape Mental Health, a non-profit organisation that offers free community-based mental health support to adults and children living with intellectual and psychiatric disabilities in the Western Cape. It ran over Saturday and Sunday, but we just popped in on the Saturday.
Next to the professional kite-flying area, there was lots of entertainment in between kite-setting-up and in general. While we were there, this took the form of some singers and the Hip Fusion belly dancers. The MC was also very entertaining. At one point he was standing in front of my mom and me while he was naming some people who were attending. “We’ve got international kites, we’ve got live performers, we’ve got” – here he looked at us – “the media” – he looked at us again and then added “the bohemian media” – and then mumbled something about our clothes, which we thought was pretty hilarious. We’re considering officially introducing ourselves as the Bohemian media from now on…
There were some really nice kites – huge animals, smaller more traditional kites, fast maneuvering stunt kites and ones hand-made by those who attended the workshops running during the weekend. My personal favourites were the salamander (sadly I just saw it from behind when we arrived and not again), the lemur and the giant squid – super cool!
The festival costs just R20 for adults and the kite workshops cost R50. It’s a great day out for a worthy cause.
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The Annual Cape Town International Kite Festival
