Surviving South Africa

I have made it through my first two days in South Africa intact. It was touch and go there the first night, as we waited for Lisa to pick us up from the Park Station bus terminal right in the center of Johannesburg around evening. The place looked sketchy, but it was really our Botswanan mini-bus driver who really confirmed our plight when he turned to us as, others got out mid-street to avoid waiting for traffic to clear up, and said “you two, DO NOT GET OFF THE BUS.” Then, even inside the station itself, we stayed on the bus – a little island of safety in the chaos and the unknown all around us – waiting for poor Lisa to risk her life and car to come get us. A little adventure with finding the corner that she was waiting for us on was also fun, but once in her car and on our way to the suburbs in Sandton that she calls home, we were good.

Outside of the ridiculous crime rate and paranoia that it generates, I have to say that Johannesburg reminds me a lot of an American city. I couldn’t actually tell you WHICH American city – there are parts that feel like Seattle, others that feel like Chicago, and even some that feel sort of LA like, with some Queens thrown in there for good measure. Everyone talks about how dangerous the place is, which is odd, because there are so many places that do not feel at all dangerous. We ate dinner with Lisa at Moya, in a new, ritzy, multi-use complex called Melrose Place that reminds me of Santana Row in San Jose or something similar. I would not believe that a car hijacking could take place at somewhere as high-scale at Melrose Place, but apparently, while safe, it is in no way immune.

 

Which is why I am happy we are driving our Hyundai Atos around. It may be a tin can outfitted with four mountain bike wheels, with less power than a couple donkeys, but it is pretty much guaranteed to not be a target for car hijackings. We picked it up the morning after we arrived in Joburg and then had to part ways with Lisa as she had some meetings to go to, and we had to get on the road. I was reluctant at first to drive this little machine around, but in the past couple days I have grown to appreciate it’s high pitched whine when we hit 100km/h or its Buddhist-inspired encouragement of patience on one-lane highways when behind a lorrie going at 90km/h that the poor car cannot muster up the power to pass.

It is true though, that I do appreciate our little red car. I feel like it has been integral to my personal growth. I now have driven on the left hand side of the road for the first time in my life. I am feeling more and more comfortable driving a manual shift, and it’s forgiving clutch means that I am stalling less than 5 times a day now. Moreover, our first night together was literally spent together – my desire to watch the Barcelona game led us to spend two good nighttime hours at a casino in Bethlehem, 50km away from our guest house. By the time we go to where we thought the guest house was, it was midnight and all the lights were off. So we decided to sleep in our car, (hopefully) safely hidden inside the gates of the guesthouse. Our little Hyundai kept us warm through the night.

Of course, we were surprised the next morning when we were woken up by an old Boer man who informed us that we had slept on his dairy farm, about 2km away from the guesthouse. Luckily for us, he was nice enough to invite us in for a cup of coffee, and completely unexpectedly, we were drawn into two hours of enlightening conversation with him. The unfortunate truth is, he is a racist through and through – but a surprisingly nice, religious, reasonable, and friendly one, however unlikely that is. A couple hours after we took leave of him, we found ourselves engaged in another conversation with a friendly Boer, this time at the Ficksburg library. It was through her that we found out that Ladybrand was full of Chinese people and that Taiwanese were in Lesotho in a big way. Where there are Chinese people, there is Chinese food, and Young and I found the best Chinese food in Ficksburg (and that I’ve had since leaving Hong Kong a couple months ago). It was at J&C Restaurant, and I had the pleasure of hearing about the Chinese and their business here in Free State and Lesotho from a Taiwanese woman who had been in the country for 11 years already.

In all, it has been an amazing first two days in South Africa, filled with unexpected experiences, interesting conversations, and quite a bit of stalling and transmission gaffes. Can you imagine? This does not even count the fact that we are actually in Lesotho as I am writing this entry. Every once in a while, I’ll think about what I’ve done and what we’re doing, and I shake my own head in disbelief. How lucky I have been.