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"My Trip To South Africa (part two)"
or
"Who Let The Monkeys Out!! (whooomp, whoomp whoomp whoomp)"
When we first arrived at our cottage in Blythedale Beach, it was quite dark. All we could tell was that the ocean was somewhere out our back door, but that there were some trees and a path somewhere to get to it. We didn't try investigating though -- at the office, there was a big sign saying: "Warning: our monkeys do bite the hands that feed them!" So we elected to wait until morning. First thing we were all up and into our swimsuits, heading for the beach. We had to walk about 50 feet through basically jungle to get to the beach, but it would all of a sudden open up into nothing but sand and a bit of rock for miles on either side. Very nice.
It wasn't the nicest, though -- I guess public beaches that can be accessed at night aren't necessarily common, and this one was covered in tire tracks (or tyre, as they spell it there) every morning, along with empty condom wrappers and various litter blowing around... come to think of it, it's just like Mooney's Bay in Ottawa!
There were lots of interesting warning signs we saw in South Africa -- the Bay Crocodile Sanctuary had a big "don't dangle your arms, and if you do it's not our fault" sign, and our beach even had a "watch out for sharks, because we don't guarantee that our shark nets will work!" sign. This worried us at first, but then we realized that sharks wouldn't be in close to the beach, because the surf was much too punishing -- perhaps six months from now, when it calms down... but I'm not going to check!
The jungle path didn't give us any excitement until a few hours later -- we were sitting around, avoiding the sun (I was of course already burned by this point), when suddenly five Vervet Monkeys ran across the lawn, just 25 feet away from us. We weren't prepared for this at all, and just sat blinkning for a few seconds, trying to process the information. We all scurried out to watch them, but they're very shy -- if you're looking at them, they hide. It's actually a dominance thing -- staring directly at primates (like we humans!) is a challenge, so avoiding eye contact / visibility is a defense mechanism. Anyway, Tim went to sit under the trees where we'd seen them, and just sat still for a while. Later he reported that if you sat still, the curiousity would overtake the fear, and the monkeys would reappear. He said he looked up at one point and there were several monkeys right over his head, staring right back at him! Dad noticed that the monkeys would hide themselves so they could see you, but you couldn't see them... if you moved to see them, they would then shift slightly to hide from your gaze again. Awfully exciting, but they only actually show up in about five pictures (out of at least a roll and a half of film exhausted on them that day!!)... accustomed to Canadian wildlife, we weren't expecting to get much closer to anything exciting and picture-worthy. If only we knew!
Later we drove into Stanger -- we'd been there the night we arrived, and had supper at this Tex-Mex place that was oddly disconcerting. It was kind of like those science-fiction stories where the astronaut visits a place that's almost but not quite Earth, where people say slightly unusual things, and he has to use leaps of logic to trick them into revealing themselves. It just wasn't quite right, but I still haven't put my finger on what it was. The theme of the place was very "American Indian" in cartoony stereotype style, which made my sensitive 21st-century lefty senses go on alert!! After supper that night we'd tried to follow our helpful waiter's directions to get to our cottage, but our confusion and his lack of specifics ("turn a bit later") got us lost and driving around the not so nice parts of town. The next day, the town was a lot easier to figure out -- this is quite common, I now know. Streetlights and reflective paint and other things are used only sometimes, so it's easy to suddenly lose track of where you are...
In Johannesburg we had seen many (MANY) people selling things at intersections -- cold drinks, clothes hangers, fruit, all sorts of stuff. This grey market economy is huge -- one of our travel books pegged it at 30% of the actual economy! It's scary to watch somebody sprint in front of highway traffic to bring the last wicker basket to a customer who wants it -- likely for only R5 or so, $1.00.
It's fascinating to think about how different money is in South Africa -- what constantly struck me was how cheap things were, but how much more was achieved with that money. Like the 7-8 attendants at an average gas station, for example. One morning we were all asleep in the cottage and I woke up to use the washroom... the sun was up and I heard "Morning!" from just outside the window. I just figured someone was walking by and greeting someone else, but then I heard it again. By now I could see where the person was -- right at our front door. And still saying "Morning!" So I went to the door and said Morning! back to him... he then started, in halting and confusing English, to explain that (as near as I could tell) he had missed his bus due to some unforseen circumstances, and needed 2 rand to get home. I, still asleep but standing up, said I didn't think I had any but I would check. I found R2, and brought it back, but by this point he was gone, so I closed the door and went back to sleep. I still don't really know what happened.
Another time we were driving along a road in the interior, and drove past some kids -- as soon as we were close, one six year old yelled "give me some money!" We were white, and obviously had money, and it was very discomforting to see all these people who needed help, but be unable to help. If you ever start thinking you live in conditions beneath you, visit Africa. It'll open your eyes.
Peoples' reactions to our presence were varied. The tension and caution at our white skin was quite palpable in many areas, since for over 60 years the white minority had brutally oppressed anyone of any other colour in South Africa. It reminded me of visiting Quebec, where I try to be very polite and use French whenever possible, because I'd rather have someone say "silly Ontarian, I speak English" than "stupid English Canadian, not even trying", even though that of course is a stereotype. When it was discovered that we were not South African (as soon as we opened our mouths!) most people opened up immediately, smiling and telling us about themselves and asking about where we were from. Canada's status was also intriguing -- being Canadian is very helpful in Europe, but in Africa you could almost see the conflict between our Canadian-ness and the fact that we were white. Driving on the interior highways when we passed children they would almost always smile and wave excitedly, just to have waved at a white person... this was good for the ego, but then seeing the conditions they lived in made my white middle-class liberal guilt flare up again... an interesting struggle.
Durban was a fascinating city. It's Africa's largest port, and 9th largest in the world, and South Africa's 3rd largest city -- very crowded and busy. Here we saw signs at the side of the road saying "car tuneup" and "barber shop" but the signs didn't point anywhere -- it took me a minute to figure out that they were referring to the tents (sometimes no tents at all) and stacks of tires behind the signs! Save on rent, I guess... In Durban we wanted to find a camera shop to get our film developed, and we spotted one that looked scary (think the wrong side of Broadway in NYC), but it was our best bet so far. We walked in the door, and found a narrow staircase that led us half a flight, and then opened up into a modern, clean, very nice (if somewhat small) camera and photofinishing shop. We were happy to see that, after our overactive imaginations had been unable to even keep up with everything else we'd seen in South Africa -- I often could not predict what I would see behind any given door (whether good or bad). It was really cool, actually, to be somewhere so intensely different from anywhere I'd been before. WHat's scary is how close it is to North America -- I wonder how I'd react in Beijing, for example, or New Delhi.
The shopkeeper greeted us warmly and took Mom's film cassettes, and then demanded of her who Tim and I were -- "These are your two nice boys? Good," she said, gesturing to Tim, "I have a daughter for you!" She said nothing about marrying me off though... intuition? When we came back later to get our prints, she conspicuously had her daughter serve us, and told her daughter to go and dig some out some free digital watches for Tim and I... "give these boys something to take home!" Too funny.
Another thing that took some getting used to was the highway signage... South Africa uses more international signs that anywhere in North America, and it was very unusual... no stopping? An S with a slash... it looked like a dollar sign from far away! As you approached an exit, there would be two or three signs with just diagonal slashes on them, three slashes, 50 metres, two slashes, 50m, one slash, then the exit. There were other signs denoting (we think) divided and undivided highways, but they looked like a transformer with a slash through him or something. "No transformers?" said Dad.
Back to Blythedale Beach to relax -- Durban was exhausting! We settled in to watch some TV, and discovered South African TV... five channels, three of which are SABC (state TV -- at least a half-dozen different languages had shows and news, plus a bunch of American stuff). Not surprisingly, Hollywood has a big presence here, with The Cosby Show, Moesha, Family Matters, ER, Law & Order... no West Wing (American politics likely don't sell here). They do have South African Gladiators though!! We managed to find some international news (not easy), and were shocked in the first item to see Jean Chretien walk out to a podium, surrounded by Canadian flags. Beside him was Tony Blair. It was their meeting a few weeks back. The voiceover though, was as follows: "British Prime Minister and US President George W Bush had talks recently on the missile defence program, blah blah..." No CanCon at all!
One day on the highway we got stopped by traffic cops -- that was a little scary. There's nothing like being stopped by men with guns who don't necessarily speak your language (and who have a bad history) to wake you up a bit. They were surprised to hear we were Canadian, and quickly sent us on our way. The next day in the paper we read that over 75% of traffic cops in
SA take bribes, so I dunno...
(to be continued in the unplanned but now necessary part three, as I have to get to work!)
or
"Who Let The Monkeys Out!! (whooomp, whoomp whoomp whoomp)"
When we first arrived at our cottage in Blythedale Beach, it was quite dark. All we could tell was that the ocean was somewhere out our back door, but that there were some trees and a path somewhere to get to it. We didn't try investigating though -- at the office, there was a big sign saying: "Warning: our monkeys do bite the hands that feed them!" So we elected to wait until morning. First thing we were all up and into our swimsuits, heading for the beach. We had to walk about 50 feet through basically jungle to get to the beach, but it would all of a sudden open up into nothing but sand and a bit of rock for miles on either side. Very nice.
It wasn't the nicest, though -- I guess public beaches that can be accessed at night aren't necessarily common, and this one was covered in tire tracks (or tyre, as they spell it there) every morning, along with empty condom wrappers and various litter blowing around... come to think of it, it's just like Mooney's Bay in Ottawa!
There were lots of interesting warning signs we saw in South Africa -- the Bay Crocodile Sanctuary had a big "don't dangle your arms, and if you do it's not our fault" sign, and our beach even had a "watch out for sharks, because we don't guarantee that our shark nets will work!" sign. This worried us at first, but then we realized that sharks wouldn't be in close to the beach, because the surf was much too punishing -- perhaps six months from now, when it calms down... but I'm not going to check!
The jungle path didn't give us any excitement until a few hours later -- we were sitting around, avoiding the sun (I was of course already burned by this point), when suddenly five Vervet Monkeys ran across the lawn, just 25 feet away from us. We weren't prepared for this at all, and just sat blinkning for a few seconds, trying to process the information. We all scurried out to watch them, but they're very shy -- if you're looking at them, they hide. It's actually a dominance thing -- staring directly at primates (like we humans!) is a challenge, so avoiding eye contact / visibility is a defense mechanism. Anyway, Tim went to sit under the trees where we'd seen them, and just sat still for a while. Later he reported that if you sat still, the curiousity would overtake the fear, and the monkeys would reappear. He said he looked up at one point and there were several monkeys right over his head, staring right back at him! Dad noticed that the monkeys would hide themselves so they could see you, but you couldn't see them... if you moved to see them, they would then shift slightly to hide from your gaze again. Awfully exciting, but they only actually show up in about five pictures (out of at least a roll and a half of film exhausted on them that day!!)... accustomed to Canadian wildlife, we weren't expecting to get much closer to anything exciting and picture-worthy. If only we knew!
Later we drove into Stanger -- we'd been there the night we arrived, and had supper at this Tex-Mex place that was oddly disconcerting. It was kind of like those science-fiction stories where the astronaut visits a place that's almost but not quite Earth, where people say slightly unusual things, and he has to use leaps of logic to trick them into revealing themselves. It just wasn't quite right, but I still haven't put my finger on what it was. The theme of the place was very "American Indian" in cartoony stereotype style, which made my sensitive 21st-century lefty senses go on alert!! After supper that night we'd tried to follow our helpful waiter's directions to get to our cottage, but our confusion and his lack of specifics ("turn a bit later") got us lost and driving around the not so nice parts of town. The next day, the town was a lot easier to figure out -- this is quite common, I now know. Streetlights and reflective paint and other things are used only sometimes, so it's easy to suddenly lose track of where you are...
In Johannesburg we had seen many (MANY) people selling things at intersections -- cold drinks, clothes hangers, fruit, all sorts of stuff. This grey market economy is huge -- one of our travel books pegged it at 30% of the actual economy! It's scary to watch somebody sprint in front of highway traffic to bring the last wicker basket to a customer who wants it -- likely for only R5 or so, $1.00.
It's fascinating to think about how different money is in South Africa -- what constantly struck me was how cheap things were, but how much more was achieved with that money. Like the 7-8 attendants at an average gas station, for example. One morning we were all asleep in the cottage and I woke up to use the washroom... the sun was up and I heard "Morning!" from just outside the window. I just figured someone was walking by and greeting someone else, but then I heard it again. By now I could see where the person was -- right at our front door. And still saying "Morning!" So I went to the door and said Morning! back to him... he then started, in halting and confusing English, to explain that (as near as I could tell) he had missed his bus due to some unforseen circumstances, and needed 2 rand to get home. I, still asleep but standing up, said I didn't think I had any but I would check. I found R2, and brought it back, but by this point he was gone, so I closed the door and went back to sleep. I still don't really know what happened.
Another time we were driving along a road in the interior, and drove past some kids -- as soon as we were close, one six year old yelled "give me some money!" We were white, and obviously had money, and it was very discomforting to see all these people who needed help, but be unable to help. If you ever start thinking you live in conditions beneath you, visit Africa. It'll open your eyes.
Peoples' reactions to our presence were varied. The tension and caution at our white skin was quite palpable in many areas, since for over 60 years the white minority had brutally oppressed anyone of any other colour in South Africa. It reminded me of visiting Quebec, where I try to be very polite and use French whenever possible, because I'd rather have someone say "silly Ontarian, I speak English" than "stupid English Canadian, not even trying", even though that of course is a stereotype. When it was discovered that we were not South African (as soon as we opened our mouths!) most people opened up immediately, smiling and telling us about themselves and asking about where we were from. Canada's status was also intriguing -- being Canadian is very helpful in Europe, but in Africa you could almost see the conflict between our Canadian-ness and the fact that we were white. Driving on the interior highways when we passed children they would almost always smile and wave excitedly, just to have waved at a white person... this was good for the ego, but then seeing the conditions they lived in made my white middle-class liberal guilt flare up again... an interesting struggle.
Durban was a fascinating city. It's Africa's largest port, and 9th largest in the world, and South Africa's 3rd largest city -- very crowded and busy. Here we saw signs at the side of the road saying "car tuneup" and "barber shop" but the signs didn't point anywhere -- it took me a minute to figure out that they were referring to the tents (sometimes no tents at all) and stacks of tires behind the signs! Save on rent, I guess... In Durban we wanted to find a camera shop to get our film developed, and we spotted one that looked scary (think the wrong side of Broadway in NYC), but it was our best bet so far. We walked in the door, and found a narrow staircase that led us half a flight, and then opened up into a modern, clean, very nice (if somewhat small) camera and photofinishing shop. We were happy to see that, after our overactive imaginations had been unable to even keep up with everything else we'd seen in South Africa -- I often could not predict what I would see behind any given door (whether good or bad). It was really cool, actually, to be somewhere so intensely different from anywhere I'd been before. WHat's scary is how close it is to North America -- I wonder how I'd react in Beijing, for example, or New Delhi.
The shopkeeper greeted us warmly and took Mom's film cassettes, and then demanded of her who Tim and I were -- "These are your two nice boys? Good," she said, gesturing to Tim, "I have a daughter for you!" She said nothing about marrying me off though... intuition? When we came back later to get our prints, she conspicuously had her daughter serve us, and told her daughter to go and dig some out some free digital watches for Tim and I... "give these boys something to take home!" Too funny.
Another thing that took some getting used to was the highway signage... South Africa uses more international signs that anywhere in North America, and it was very unusual... no stopping? An S with a slash... it looked like a dollar sign from far away! As you approached an exit, there would be two or three signs with just diagonal slashes on them, three slashes, 50 metres, two slashes, 50m, one slash, then the exit. There were other signs denoting (we think) divided and undivided highways, but they looked like a transformer with a slash through him or something. "No transformers?" said Dad.
Back to Blythedale Beach to relax -- Durban was exhausting! We settled in to watch some TV, and discovered South African TV... five channels, three of which are SABC (state TV -- at least a half-dozen different languages had shows and news, plus a bunch of American stuff). Not surprisingly, Hollywood has a big presence here, with The Cosby Show, Moesha, Family Matters, ER, Law & Order... no West Wing (American politics likely don't sell here). They do have South African Gladiators though!! We managed to find some international news (not easy), and were shocked in the first item to see Jean Chretien walk out to a podium, surrounded by Canadian flags. Beside him was Tony Blair. It was their meeting a few weeks back. The voiceover though, was as follows: "British Prime Minister and US President George W Bush had talks recently on the missile defence program, blah blah..." No CanCon at all!
One day on the highway we got stopped by traffic cops -- that was a little scary. There's nothing like being stopped by men with guns who don't necessarily speak your language (and who have a bad history) to wake you up a bit. They were surprised to hear we were Canadian, and quickly sent us on our way. The next day in the paper we read that over 75% of traffic cops in
SA take bribes, so I dunno...
(to be continued in the unplanned but now necessary part three, as I have to get to work!)
