Page 121 - Bulletin 7 2003

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de la Cruz. A number of Filipinos sought refuge here and in the Italian Quarter in
Cape Town, because of the unsuccessful uprising against the Spanish of 1872.

Although Filipino women had joined the fleeing menfolk the majority of the men

married coloured women. They were staunch Roman Catholics and used to sail from

Kalk Bay to Simon’s Town to attend church, weather permitting. Because of this
inconvenience a church was built locally and named after the patron saint of Spain

and the fisherman Apostle St. James.

The Filipinos spoke poor English and I have not heard any of them attempting to
speak Afrikaans. A few funny stories have been told of a Filipino fisherman being

sent by his wife to purchase some lard and barley. Her instruction in Afrikaans was

to buy lard and gort (which is barley). He asked for a two-penny lord and a two-
penny god! On another occasion during the Easter period one went to the grocer and

asked for “die kruisban” (braces). Now in those days it was part of the normal dress

to wear braces to hold up your trousers. But after a long struggle the shop-keeper
realised that the man wanted hot-cross buns.

The Filipinos were very good, disciplined and peace-loving people and one of their

contributions to the Kalk Bay community was the introduction of the Spanish guitar
– the ordinary 6-string guitar. When I was a boy I am sure that every third family in

the community had a guitar and of course the children would also learn to play it. In

our community we had some very wonderful singers with an outstanding choir at St.
James church, and the songs or ballads that the fishermen sang were so wonderful to

listen to.

Then we had Moslems as part of the community and these people were mostly
escaped or freed slaves from Batavia and a number of them also settled at Simon’s

Town. They were a wonderful, law-abiding and deeply religious group and the most

respectable people I have ever known. As early as 1874 they already had a mosque at
Kalk Bay and every day after school the boys would have to go down to the mosque