The Real African Experience

Ha ha. Staying with my sister's friend here in Swaziland. He works for the foreign service, and although I may not be meeting a lot of backpackers, he knows and understands both South Africa and Swaziland. So I've learned a lot about international politics.

Saved money on lodging and food. So I spent it on a rental car for the last two days. Woo-wee! What an adventure. Here in Swaziland, they drive on the left side of the road, from the right side of the car. Of course, the cheapest car they had was stick. Which meant the stick was on my left. I was shifting gears with my left hand. And I can't tell you how many times I turned on my windshield wiper with my left-hand, meaning to hit the turn-signal. But man -- it was fun. Got back a little later than I had intended to last night. Driving stick on my left, on the left side of the road, in the dark, in the rain, through the fog, with pedestrians periously close to the road, fear of a cow or rooster jumping in my way. I visited a Swazi Cultural village yesterday, and on my way out, on the little dirt road, a herd of about 10 cows blocked my exit. Cape Town has been quite modern. But, as I sat there on the wrong side of the car and the wrong side of the road, bouncing my way on the unpaved road, staring at 10 cows staring right back at me, I realized: Jojo, you're not in Kansas anymore.

Today, I visited a nature reserve. Saw a hippo come out of the water. Saw two big hippos and a baby hippo. Saw zebras. Saw Wildebeast, and a ton of Pumbas (warthogs). Babies, too. Saw ostriches. I met a woman from South Africa, and we hung out a bit today. As we were waiting for the hippo feeding, along with other people, a couple ostriches came over to look for food. Me and the other tourists all ooh-ed and aah-ed, clicking away with our cameras. I was totally fascinated. By how the head moved. The long neck, looked quite snake like. The head bobbing almost looked like a puppet. And the wings -- it looked like the ostriches kept dropping their wings, and had to keep raising and repositioning it. The South African woman said, 'It's just an ostrich. It's just a cranky ol' bird.' The way she said it, I figured it was like someone ooh-ing and aah-ing at a pigeon. But . . . well, they were still fascinating.

Oh, but what was interesting to me. In the township tour I went to, our colored guy talked about the black townships and the colored townships. Our guide told us he lives in Mitchel's Plains, a colored township, and added that the colored townships were not safe for us to visit. I asked this woman, who is colored, if she grew up in a township (prefacing with an apology for my ignorance). She told me -- there's no such thing as a colored township. There are only black townships. And there are areas where lots of coloreds happen to live. I asked her, what about Mitchel's Plains? Oh, just a neighborhood where a lot of coloreds live . . .

Tonight, my sister's friend took me to the local casino. He's told me that the Chinese population is the fastest growing population here. I haven't seen many. But man -- the concentration of Chinese people I've seen in the Southern Hemisphere! So we played blackjack. I hung in for quite a while. Never was up by much. But I ended up ahead 50! Fifty bucks? No, fifty rand. What's the equivalency? Uh . . . about 5 bucks . . .