- No Cape Coloured’s checklist is complete without at least five different nationalities making up your confusing looks.
- Being born with blonde hair, light eyes and fair skin gave you instant celebrity status in your street. And you’re not Swedish.
- You have broad nostrils, a flat nose and rather large lips and butt, rendering the previous statement a moot point.
- You’re drilling, weed-whacking, lawn-mowing, chainsawing and angle-grinding before 7am or after 8pm any given day of the week.
- Dressing/acting common or choosing common friends would bring on a screaming showdown with your mother eg “be coloured but don’t be COMMON”.
- Your childhood friends and family have names like Quinton, Compton, Estelle, Lavinia, Denver, Carmelita or Genevieve.
- You played kennechie in the street as a child.
- Every family game of dominoes, klawwejas or kerrem usually ends in a fight.
- Your father did the ironing shirtless on a Sunday and took a doppie, which ensured that Sunday night was sometimes Mom and Dad’s fight night
- You played with Sindy dolls as a child, not Barbie.
- Bringing home a white date brings much excitement and swishing curtains in neighbours’ windows.
- You bought your Mother’s/Father’s Day gifts from the babbie down the road.
- You bought your mother Vinolia soap for Mother’s Day and your brothers Pez sweets for Christmas.
- You used to cut your own fringe and your brothers called it a ‘verandah’ because too-short fringes and curly hair don’t really go together.
- Your hairstyle is supported by ±40 hair grips, 2l of gel, plus an alice band.
- You wear your hair in a bolla not a bun.
- Germans seem to like you. A lot.
- You sprinkle your sentences with ma and mos e.g. “Denver, can you ma take this to Tietie Gairu? You mos her favourite!”
- You’re a girl, and your mother shouted at you to “STOP CRAWLING ON THE FLOOR OR YOU’LL MAKE YOUR KNEES BLACK!”
- You have black knees.
- You rubbed used lemon halves on your elbows to make them white (because your mother forced you to do it).
- Your Spanish-German-English-Dutch-Javanese heritage, coupled with well-spoken English, could cause aneurysms in strangers as they try to work out exactly where you’re from and ‘what’ you are.
- People say you ‘put on’ but you’re only well-spoken because that’s how your parents speak and you had a private school education to avoid the riots in the ’70s.
- Your parents had a radio-gramme and they played LPs from Trini Lopez, Deodato, Stanley Black, Shirley Bassey, Santana and Tom Jones.
- Your dad cries to songs.
- Instead of going to church, your dad played church radio on a Sunday and he and your mother sang along to the hymns.
- The more you drink, the more you cry. And drunk dial.
- You relocated to Canada and Australia, and picked up an overseas accent quicker than an STD from a dodgy partner.
- You favour phrases like holly har, loep skyt, jay vat my laag and ghoms.
- You lived in District Six waaaay before gentrification became a thing.
- The motjie down the road sends you delicious curry and basmati rice every Christmas.
- You know the difference between koesistas and koeksisters.
- Your mother knows how to make daltjies and bollas.
- You played elastics, Red Rover, Oranges ‘n Lemons and ‘Under the bamboo bushes’ at school.
- Your grandparents had a horse called Majestic, a lamb called Bambi, an Alsatian called Shane, a black Doberman called Skollie and bantam hens in the backyard.
- You’ve had watermelon-spitting contests in your backyard.
- You helped your mother make konfyt by pricking the watermelon skins all over with a fork. It was hard work.
- You’re under five but you’re still out after 10pm, screaming loudly in the street and eating sweets.
- The whole family, including aunts and uncles, would meet at a river two hours away from home, where your dad would swim around with you on his back like a dolphin – until the day you got bilharzia and peed blood.
- You went to the Goodwood drive-in every Friday, fighting over who got to lie in the back window of your orange Passat, and forcing your dad to hoot if the movie didn’t start on time.
- Your mother makes pickled fish with ‘proper’ spices and fresh snoek – hake doesn’t count!
- You love your mother’s sago pudding, made with stick cinnamon, a golden crust and eaten with apricot jam.
- You think a dinner party that doesn’t include crayfish tails and mayonnaise in a lettuce leaf as a starter is NOT posh.
- You can only leave your mother’s table after having eaten enough to feed a family of four.
- You MUST give your father 12 year old Chivas Regal in a velvet pouch as a gift.
- If at least one of your biological parents is not coloured or black, YOU ARE NOT A TRUE COLOURED.
- If you’ve seen an older family member slurp Five Roses tea from a saucer, add another tick to your Cape Coloured checklist.
- You grooved at the Galaxy in the ’80s.
- You live in ‘Hayrreveld’, Bishops (Lavis, not Court), Ottery, Blue Downs, Delft, Mitchell’s Plain or Elsies, among others.
- When you say fanny, you don’t mean bum.
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part two: 169 ways to know if you’re Cape Coloured
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