Page 132 - KBHA BULLETIN 5

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thrown through a window, and the Hall was unusable for considerably longer than the next

day. Those were very difficult days, and we tend to forget them.

Recently I visited some former residents of Kalk Bay and they admitted to having been most
disapproving of the election of Desmond Tutu, and took the seating in the church for granted.

And they admitted to having been mistaken. They said that now they like Bishop Desmond’s
humour, and that the blacks on the TV speak better English than they do. But they said: “We

grew up with it and we didn’t know anything else.” This gave me an insight into how we

view history. We cannot judge the past from where we are, but we can be responsible for the
decisions we make now. In those years there were very deep differences both in the church

and the Community concerning what was happening in the land. We had no means of

resolving them as a community, or listening to one another.

Daily Bread

In the early 80s one of the wives of a fisherman, Sally Cornberg, discovered that children
were coming to the RC Mission School in Kalk Bay so hungry that they had been eating

sand. Always open to give something to eat to anyone who came to her door, she began to

feed these children. To cut a long story short this led to the provision of food not only for
children but eventually also for adults. A meal was provided once a day from Monday to

Friday for up to 70 adults by a roster of people from all sections of the community in teams
of two or three. They did not always find this easy. There were lighter moments as when one

of the clients was asked where he stayed and replied: “Clovelly se bos.” To which another
retorted: ”Clovelly se bos - Kalk Baai se bos, Vishoek se bos, Clovelly se bos - die bos is die

bos!” And there were scarey moments, as when the Hall was packed for the annual Christmas

party and a batch of policeman arrived to arrest one of the guests, who had robbed a car.

In 1989 the Ratepayers Association asked that the Daily Bread be closed down. It was

claimed that this had led to the worsening of vagrancy in the area. If nothing else, I hope you
have realised that social problems are nothing new in Kalk Bay. It is arguable from our

history that they can only be relieved by tackling them full on.

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