By South African Airways instead of the train
Well, tomorrow, 1 October, we fly out of Cape Town for Namibia. It has been a great
visit. South Africa has felt very strange though. We enjoyed it but something
was not quite right. Though I enjoyed the country and visit, unlike almost
every country I have been to, I am not in love with it. I could not figure out
why until we talked with Edy at the Best Little Guest House in Oudtshoorn. She
says the problem is that it feels so “familiar”. “Look around, this could be
anywhere in the western part of the U.S.” “The people all speak English, so
really, there is nothing new to your senses here other than the game parks.”
And she is right. My favorite town, Cradock, could be any little working town out west.
Don’t take this the wrong way, that I did not enjoy the trip. I
enjoyed it immensely and Vicki will be talking about it the rest of her life
because of the animal encounters.
The politics of the country are interesting. There is no way that in 30
days I can comprehend it all but there are some basics. Apartheid was brutal and
wrong up until it was changed in 1994. There are three groups in South Africa: the
Whites, the Blacks and the Coloreds and they describe themselves in those terms. Now the Blacks have the political power and
the Whites have the economic power and the Coloreds are left on the fringe.
There is an uneasy relationship among the three. Everybody in every country dislikes their
government so that gives the Whites an even greater reason to attack theirs and
blame everything on the Blacks. Some is merited but mainly it is just back to
the Black/White issue. Hopefully, that in future as the children mix in school
and become more comfortable with each other things will work themselves
out.
know what this is? a nipple protector. it was ok for a black to wet nurse a white baby and the baby to drink the milk, but it was not ok for a white baby's lips to touch black skin.
I did not get to mix with the man on the street as much as I would have liked as most of the mixing was with elephants. But the ones I did meet were warm and out going Black or White. At no time did we worry about our safety.
There is a immigrant population here from surrounding countries that are here just like the in U.S. They are mostly in the service sector and all the employers like them better than the South African Blacks. Like anywhere else in the world, the economic immigrant just wants to make a living to send money back home to support their families. Something we should not begrudge them.
There is a strange exception to the immigrants here and that is the ones from Zimbabwe. Sandra, of the Victoria Manor in Cradock, said they are better educated, more comfortable dealing with other people, highly literate and more outgoing. We found this to very much to be the case. Odd, since they come from such a depressed country, but their education system seems to still be working, where South Africa's seems to be failing. They act more as an equal to the White as opposed to subservient.
This trip was too busy with too much moving to tell all the stories we came
across. Hopefully, at some time in the future I might be able to do so. Here
are some that I would write.
- Sam, a economic refugee from Zimbabwe, who works at the Victoria Manor in Cradock, and his close relationship with Lambert, the black and white dog, that was left behind when his owner took a job in a foreign country. Lambert knows exactly when Sam is supposed to come to work and is visibly upset if he is late. During the whole shift Lambert stalks him were ever he goes.
- Dick, a rare art book seller, and his intriguing stories of the profession. How his father would not pay for Dick’s degree in Art History because “there is no way to make a living in that”. His father’s outlook was tempered by having been a POW in Berlin during WWII and then, when the city was liberated, having been jailed by the Russians as they thought he had some value as a scientist, which he was not. After six months and proving that he was just a Dutch POW they released him and he had to walk from Berlin back to Holland.
- Daniele and her many years working throughout Africa as a consultant mainly for British American Tobacco and “believing all those bloody ads” who now is a chain smoker busy hacking up her lungs. Her stories of working in all the different countries was intriguing.
- Eric and his famiy's history of farming in the Karoo
- The Nieu-Bethesda story.
- The street band in Cape Town
- Roger, Janet and her sister
There is a little of American in South Africa and not all of good.
