After Jo-burg we headed to the famous Kruger national park. Elephants, lions, rhinos, bla bla bla. It's amazing how one can become blasé about something that just a few weeks ago was utterly fascinating.
From there we headed to Swaziland, in the hopes of finding some Swazis, I guess. What we did fine instead was rainy, cold lush hills perpetually covered in fog.
It was like living in a cloud, or somewhere in the Northern UK. Now you may think that this analogy is unfair, seeing as I've never been to the Northern UK (at the time of original writing) but the first three towns we passed when we came out of Swaziland (without any Swazis to show for it, no less)were called Belfast, Dundee and Newcastle.
Coincidence? I think not!
Back in SA, we started making our way to Lesotho. Along the way, we had a chance to stop and meet some true Afrikaans farmers...boers; very friendly, amiable people who were very welcoming to us. But there is a dark side: shorts worn with knee-high socks. Mullet haircuts...even on kids, which I'm pretty sure is in violation of UN children's rights.
And big bushy mustaches (this time, at least, the children were spared). It's like being time-warped back into the 70's! I'm now convinced that the Zulu wars were not fought over land and farming rights, but as a matter of fashion sense. Unfortunately, the Zulus lost.
Although Apartheid is no longer around, the effects are still quite evident. The economic divide between white, coloured and black are quite stark. There is also a great divide in opinions about where the country is going. Some see Mandela as a hero who pointed SA in the right direction and acts as a moral guide as well. Others feel it necessary to point out that he was jailed as a terrorist for detonating a bomb in a train station and started sending the country into a tailspin.
Those who have foreign passports have left or are keeping them very close at hand for when they are going to have to flee. Those who don't have a choice...have hope. And lots of it! It really does transcend race and economic boundaries, and maybe these are the only opinions that really matter since they'll be the ones who will make the necessary sacrifices.
I have to point out that the coming into SA also had a very significant effect on The Truck as a whole. In Vic Falls, we had a change of groups as new people came and others left. The rather smallish group which went from Vic Falls to Jo-Burg consisted of merry English holiday makers with tons o' cash to spend on themselves and their new Truck Mates. The rest of us, being the very accommodating people that we are, allowed them. And merriment was had by all.
In Jo-burg, a very different crowd joined us. Again a nurse...and Dutch. I'm not sure if she knew about our previous Dutch nurses or if her constitution would tend towards a Dutch Nurse Sandwich, but in my mind it already had. It's amazing the lesbian orgy scenarios which one can derive with countless hours of driving around...but maybe that's just me.
There was an additional Dutch person and 2 Flemish people as well, so Dutch became the second official language of The Truck, which helped in trying to figure out Afrikaans. There was a quack American, who we forgot in some small, nameless town/toilet break. It was only after 90 minutes of driving that his tent mate noticed he wasn't there. That's the kind of presence this guy has. We did finally pick him up, but by then end of the trip, there were more than a few who felt it would have been better if we hadn't.
There was another Canadian - a Chaos theory something or other PhD student; a Dubliner who thought that the rest of Ireland was inhabited by "Culchies"; an octogenarian from a small place near some other small place in northern England who spoke, I kid you not, without ever using consonants. I didn't understand a word he said for the whole trip. We got along quite well.
Finally there were a group of Welsh, one of whom was the former mayor of Cardiff. It's true! I can't tell you he is, but he is the one mayor without multiple double L's and random Y's in his name. C'mon, there can't be more than a handful of people in Wales who can fit that description.
Oh...and my brother joined The Truck. Since I'm too lazy to take him off this distribution list, I won't say anythng about him.
Anyhoo, long story short, we went through Lesotho, which was very nice and drove along the garden route to Cape Town, climbed Table Mountain went on wine tours in Stellenbosch stopped in some random places along the way and it was all very, very nice.
Next it’s off to Namibia tomorrow morning to roast in 45°C heat.
Oh, and some photos if you're not already bored:
http://www.ofoto.com/I.jsp?c=9s4cmvvd.99y4ydh5&x=0&y=bythvn
Monday, December 29, 2008
South Africa
After driving through the freezing cold wind of the Kalahari - as one expects when driving through the midday sun of a desert - we arrived in South Africa. Almost magically, everything was, well green. It's almost as if they decided the border based on where their lawn finally died.
Driving on to Jo-burg was like driving through the small-towns in the Southern US, except on the wrong side of the road. Of course, the analogy stops once we actually got into the towns, because they seemed to be just full of people hanging around listlessly looking at us. Aparthied may be removed from the political landscape, but the effects and economic divisions - which usually run along racial lines - are still very visibly there.
On second thought, I guess it's much like most small towns in the southern US.
There was a sense of foreboding coming into Jo-burg. Everyone had heard the stories about the rampant crime in the place, so everyone was on the lookout. Every street corner was a potential car-jacking waiting to happen. Even if you didn't have a car, they will supply one for you - that's how efficient they are!
Even the locals we spoke to gave us advice on how not to look like a tourist and, therefore a target. One person at the ATM said "There's an edge to living in Jo'burg...if something bad is going to happen to you, well then it's going to happen". The only people who painted a pretty picture were those working in the tourist industry; and even then the best they could do was "All big cities have crime".
It didn't help things to see every building bigger than a Rubik's Cube to be walled in and topped with electric wires which I imagine are a bit more harmful to people than they are to the elephants which may encounter such fences in a game park. If the farmer in Robert Frost's "Mending Wall" was right in saying "Good fences make good neighbours", then these must be the best damn neighbours since the Mongols and the Chinese!
(I would just like to digress at this point and mention how pompously self-satisfied I am with the literarily insightful and historically sardonic analogy above :-))
Also if there wasn't a sign that said "Armed Response" posted on the wall, there was an armed guard already there. Even the guy who collects the 30 cents to use the toilet at the petrol station had a shotgun. Now he didn't have a uniform or anything, so he may just have been some guy who happened to be there - and happened to be armed to the teeth - but you know what? For 30 cents, I wasn't going to potentially piss him off by asking!
But in all fairness, after all the fear and paranoia about being in Jo-burg...nothing happened. And nobody saw anything happen. Everyone had a good time, which would have been even better if everyone had loosened up a little.
A visit to Jo-Burg would not be complete (I must apologize for plagiarizing every single tourist pamphlet on the planet with this opening) without visiting Soweto township and the Aparthied museum; not at all what I expected. The township is massive and also includes the largest hospital complex in the Southern Hemisphere (which is mostly staffed by Cuban doctors. This, I think is the affect of Globalisation on the brain-drain. As SA doctors flee to Canada and the UK, they grab them from Cuba. Now where Cuba is expected to get doctors from? I don't know. But any conspiracy theorist worth his salt will be pointing a finger at the US and the Monroe Doctrine for Cuba’s woes.
Unlike the vast favelas of places like Rio, here the housing ranges from at the very lowest shoe boxes, to rather impressive mansions at the other end of the spectrum. The majority of people live in tiny houses somewhere in between. Better neighbourhoods are divided from poorer ones simply by a road. There are nine entrances to Soweto (SOuth WEstern TOwnship, in case you're wondering) and during the time of Apartheid, there was no mention of it on any road signs or maps. It practically wasn't there...except for the fact that millions lived there.
Although everyone on the tour was impressed by the level of cleanliness, order and pride within Soweto, there was still a disturbing aspect to it, and to the numerous other townships (which seemed to be much more dilapidated than Soweto) we passed along the way. This was because all the townships - instead of having normal street lighting which would give them a warmer, community aspect - were interspersed with huge floodlight towers which I'm sure were more to the benefit of police raids than the community below. They made the townships seem like huge prison yards rather than communities...and maybe that was the point.
Driving on to Jo-burg was like driving through the small-towns in the Southern US, except on the wrong side of the road. Of course, the analogy stops once we actually got into the towns, because they seemed to be just full of people hanging around listlessly looking at us. Aparthied may be removed from the political landscape, but the effects and economic divisions - which usually run along racial lines - are still very visibly there.
On second thought, I guess it's much like most small towns in the southern US.
There was a sense of foreboding coming into Jo-burg. Everyone had heard the stories about the rampant crime in the place, so everyone was on the lookout. Every street corner was a potential car-jacking waiting to happen. Even if you didn't have a car, they will supply one for you - that's how efficient they are!
Even the locals we spoke to gave us advice on how not to look like a tourist and, therefore a target. One person at the ATM said "There's an edge to living in Jo'burg...if something bad is going to happen to you, well then it's going to happen". The only people who painted a pretty picture were those working in the tourist industry; and even then the best they could do was "All big cities have crime".
It didn't help things to see every building bigger than a Rubik's Cube to be walled in and topped with electric wires which I imagine are a bit more harmful to people than they are to the elephants which may encounter such fences in a game park. If the farmer in Robert Frost's "Mending Wall" was right in saying "Good fences make good neighbours", then these must be the best damn neighbours since the Mongols and the Chinese!
(I would just like to digress at this point and mention how pompously self-satisfied I am with the literarily insightful and historically sardonic analogy above :-))
Also if there wasn't a sign that said "Armed Response" posted on the wall, there was an armed guard already there. Even the guy who collects the 30 cents to use the toilet at the petrol station had a shotgun. Now he didn't have a uniform or anything, so he may just have been some guy who happened to be there - and happened to be armed to the teeth - but you know what? For 30 cents, I wasn't going to potentially piss him off by asking!
But in all fairness, after all the fear and paranoia about being in Jo-burg...nothing happened. And nobody saw anything happen. Everyone had a good time, which would have been even better if everyone had loosened up a little.
A visit to Jo-Burg would not be complete (I must apologize for plagiarizing every single tourist pamphlet on the planet with this opening) without visiting Soweto township and the Aparthied museum; not at all what I expected. The township is massive and also includes the largest hospital complex in the Southern Hemisphere (which is mostly staffed by Cuban doctors. This, I think is the affect of Globalisation on the brain-drain. As SA doctors flee to Canada and the UK, they grab them from Cuba. Now where Cuba is expected to get doctors from? I don't know. But any conspiracy theorist worth his salt will be pointing a finger at the US and the Monroe Doctrine for Cuba’s woes.
Unlike the vast favelas of places like Rio, here the housing ranges from at the very lowest shoe boxes, to rather impressive mansions at the other end of the spectrum. The majority of people live in tiny houses somewhere in between. Better neighbourhoods are divided from poorer ones simply by a road. There are nine entrances to Soweto (SOuth WEstern TOwnship, in case you're wondering) and during the time of Apartheid, there was no mention of it on any road signs or maps. It practically wasn't there...except for the fact that millions lived there.
Although everyone on the tour was impressed by the level of cleanliness, order and pride within Soweto, there was still a disturbing aspect to it, and to the numerous other townships (which seemed to be much more dilapidated than Soweto) we passed along the way. This was because all the townships - instead of having normal street lighting which would give them a warmer, community aspect - were interspersed with huge floodlight towers which I'm sure were more to the benefit of police raids than the community below. They made the townships seem like huge prison yards rather than communities...and maybe that was the point.
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