We have a cleaner at the house. Its hard to predict what days she'll come on but she's around probably 3 days of the week. She does the dishes and general cleaning and sweeping although because its hard to know when she's coming I do a bit of the dishes cleaning since I usually need to use them most days. She doesn't do my bedroom and bathroom as she's only here for an hour and then goes to another cleaning job so I've taken on a cleaner of my own. She's through a lady at work so totally trustworthy. I had all my valuables in the room and nothing was taken. She did a fantastic job and spent about 4 hours doing two rooms! I've never spent 4 hours cleaning - ever! She probably took a break though because she asked where the tea and coffee were. We don't have any coffee but I showed her where the tea and kettle were.
Today is a perfect day outside. Estimated 24C with sunshine and blue skies with wisps of puffy white clouds. The weather here has been very mixed lately but nothing disagreeable since the temperature doesn't get cold. We had continuous pelting rain for about 3 days before Easter. So much that the outdoor goldfish pool/fountain overflowed and I'm surprised the goldfish didn't escape. The weather after that was cloudy or raining or muggy and not the crisp sharp lines of a bright sunlit day, like today.
Kruger National Park was a lot of fun over Easter. I thought that it would be hard to get a booking just for the 4 days over Easter and maybe I'd have to do a 5 day trip and take a day off work or "waste" a day sitting at home. Instead they were very flexible and got a 4 day trip on the exact days I wanted. The tour had a great bunch of people from Brazil, Columbia, America, Belgium, Holland, London and local Sth Africans as well. We stayed at a treehouse place which sounded intriguing at the start but not ideal in the end. Some of the cabins are up in the trees but if you got one of those you didn't have a bathroom and had to use the one on the ground which was built minus a roof and any locking doors. I can see why the Brazilian girls decided they couldn't stay there and transferred to a motel.
I was in a cabin that was built on stilts above the ground but not in a tree. I had an ensuite bathroom and thought that was a good swap for not being up in a tree. There were still a lot of bugs, lizards, frogs and one large rat in my room and I was pretty nervous the first night! Slept with the mosquito net around me. The cabin had a lot of gaps including two in the roof that leaked because of the torrential rain on the Friday night! Woke up to find my camera on the table soaked and the display fogged up! I wasn't too stressed as I was going to buy a new one anyway but it would be very irritating if I couldn't take photos on the trip! Luckily it was fine and now the display shows no ill-effects from the soaking although I'm sure that one day it will just stop working. The treehouse was a strange mix of camping and motel accommodation and I'm not sure I would stay in a place like that again.
Being in the country and seeing the stars in the sky on one of the clear nights was perhaps a highlight better than seeing any of the animals on the trip.
Kruger Park itself was good but not great. Comparing it to my Kenyan safari I would recommend that over SA any day! In Kenya they will drive closer to where the animals are without disturbing them but in Kruger they must stick to the roads so if the animal is far away and the grass is long, you won't get good shots. We did manage to see a large number of animals but not the leopard. We saw a herd of about 200 buffalos together and that was probably more impressive than Kenya as we didn't see many then. If you want to see animals and you don't really care that that they're not truly in the wild (ie. they roam but they get fed) then there are some great parks close to Pretoria/Joburg where you can see massive rhinos and lions as well as other animals.
Well its been six weeks here and I still have all my limbs and digits, I haven't been robbed or mugged or burgled. Nothing lost or stolen so praise God for that!
I will relate some stories that those around me have experienced and not the general stories that I have read in the papers. On story in the papers was about a schoolgirl who was sick and stayed home from school to be discovered murdered in her own house with her lower arms chopped off! Other gruesome details I will leave out. And the police have no clues.
One crime story is my work colleague's son has a friend who was driving back to his apartment at about midnight. He entered past the security complex and noticed someone riding out with his pushbike! I guess he thought it was fortunate that he caught this guy in the act of stealing his bike so he yelled to him to stop and give his bike back. The thief on the bike pulls out a 9mm and puts it to the guy's head! He makes him get out of the car and empty his pockets of money and mobile. Takes those things and takes the car as well. I'm not sure whether recovering the bike only to loose the car and other things was what the guy had in mind when he challenged the thief!
Another real life story is a car-jacking. This guy goes to hear his friend's band play and after the night's entertainment goes back to the carpark to drive back home. In the carpark someone puts a knife to his neck and forces him to drive out to one of the townships. There were other people in the car park when this happened but they were too terrified to do anything! This guy is convinced that he's had it and he's going to get killed because he only had a mobile and no money to give to the car-jacker. The rest of the story is a bit vague because this happened the night before and the lady telling me this about her son is a bit excited. Anyway he somehow manages to drive his bakkie (ute/pick-up truck) into a ditch and makes his escape. Manages somehow to contact his mum to tell her where he is and to get a tow-trunk sent out. A lucky escape to a pretty scary story!
So, like Nathan suggested I would like to check out the nightlife around here, not be cooped up in the night-time hours but I can't do it by myself! Even if you had another person you'd have to be pretty careful as groups go around robbing people all the time. I think you'd need a group of at least 4 people in the evenings to safeguard yourself. And you can't just get a taxi to place A, have some fun and then return to the relative safety of a taxi to take you back home because standing on the street at night by yourself waiting for a taxi that won't arrive is like holding up a sign that says "Please rob me"! One consolation is that crime will be less likely to affect you during the daylight hours. And as I've said before, its not that bad...during the day.
When Bruce was here for a week, on his first day back he had two people come up to him and say the exact same thing: "I'm not going to stab you but do you have any spare change?". I've had people asking me for money a few times as well, once even inside a supermarket! Another time I had two guys ask me for money and it felt pretty hairy as it was early evening and the light was fading. The thing is that there is so much poverty here and the people asking you for money really do need it! However, everyone at work tells me that I should never take my wallet out or give money to people. The only money I've given is to a blind man at Hatfield plaza who plays "What A Friend We Have In Jesus" on his pipe. And I didn't take my wallet out but just fished for my loose change in my pocket. Also gave some half of my french fries to this kid today outside Macca's.
I've taken to not carrying my wallet around if I know I won't need my credit card or ID. No point losing those things as well as my money and having to go through the process of cancelling cards that are issued in London. Even when I do take my wallet it has been emptied of cards that have no purpose in South Africa but would be a hassle for me to replace. So I just carry cash around and make sure I have enough for what I need to buy. I still carry my mobile with me as there is no way around that. If they take it, they take it I guess.
Starting to get annoyed with the services that are available here in Pretoria. In a city of 2.3M people you'd expect a lot more stuff to be around. As mentioned public transport is non-existent and private transport (ie. taxis) are hardly around either.
Anyway, I've been looking at buying another small point and shoot camera with a 5x optical zoom and prices are £100 more than amazon.co.uk. Proper DSLR prices for body and lens are painfully expensive compared to London (and London isn't even the cheapest place for camera equipment).
Failing this I'm looking into hiring a DSLR and lens but there's none around here, they're all in Joburg!
Now internet access. If I want 3G internet via USB modem I can't data enable my PAYG phone SIM card. I need to be on contract (with only specific networks) or buy a custom SIM from the internet provider. Price of SIM is R149 compared to R10 for a normal SIM card. To get the SIM however, you need to provide certified copies of ID (passport) and proof of address. This is according to new legislation that came in last year (RICA), purportedly to curb mobile crime. The company drops off your SIM card and picks up your certified copies to take back to headquarters. To get something certified you need to go to a notary, usually at a solicitor's office. It all gets too difficult.
You could go to a retail shop and show original documents and get it all done but they charge you ridiculous amounts compared to London. A 3G USB modem is between R600 - R2000!! £60 to £200!!! I just baulk from paying it on principle - never paid that much for internet equipment in my life and not going to start in a country with inferior download speeds for only 6 months!
On a more positive note it was good to have Bruce around for the last week. We had a long weekend as Monday was Human Rights Day. A lady from work lent us her car so we drove around Pretoria and went to the Wonder Caves. I had gone past this place on my previous tour but we didn't have time to do everything and so had decided to go to the Sterkfontein Caves instead of the Wonder Caves. Having now seen the Wonder Caves I think its a better sight as far as caves go than the Sterkfontein Caves. Still, I've seen a lot of caves and Sardinia and others are much more impressive. Yet, for £6 you can't really complain.
On one of our travels we came across this Afrikaans Country Western karaoke place, complete with cowboy hats and all! We only stopped late in the afternoon as we needed some food and under the canopy of a tree was a guy singing Rhinestone Cowboy! I think people would have been there specifically for it! There were some songs in Afrikaans as well; all good clean fun I guess but quite unexpected!
We went to eat at a lot of nice places too including the Carnivore Restaurant in Muldersdrift. Much, much better than the same Carnivore in Nairobi, Kenya. It wasn't very busy at the lunchtime but it is able to accommodate 500 people. Whereas the Nairobi one only had Ostrich meatballs as the exotic meat, Muldersdrift had Crocodile, Eland, Kodu, Impala and Zebra! And I had them all!! In fact I didn't have any normal meat as I started to fill very quickly and wanted to try these meats I hadn't had before. I think my favourite was Impala. Then on the Monday we went to The Hillside Tavern and I had Springbok which was delicious. Good service, good food, good ambience; proper restaurant stuff at the Hillside! Carnivore was really good value as well, about £18 for all you can eat meat! Unfortunately Pasha and Cynthia's were both closed so we couldn't go there. We did drive to both those restaurants as they are close to each other but had to settle for a Chinese restaurant that open. Our manager also took us out to Jimmy's Killer Prawns and we had a great feast there! Didn't get sick from any food either which was brilliant! And in case some of you were wondering, tap water is safe to drink in South Africa.
The accommodation I am in is quite comfortable and pleasant but there are a few caveats to be stated. It's a (mainly) student block so it gets noisy. Its quite expensive for what it is and I am probably paying 3 times what I should from my gumtree.co.za research. It is fully furnished and it gets cleaned and linen changed every week but still its almost London prices when it should not be. I'm looking to move out after my month here is finished. My main criteria is that I need to be within walking distance to work as there is basically no public transport. I've been doing a bit of reading on travel and local websites and even those who've been here for 2.5 years can't make head or tail of the buses (forget trains there aren't any). Its not that there are no buses, as I see them (and people waiting for them), but I think those who write are referring to its reliability and predictability. There aren't many taxi's either and the ones available are said to be expensive although I haven't tried them out yet. They do have these "Ubuntu" cars. Basically private minivans that go around a particular route. I think they'd be good to go on for a laugh but they just sit there waiting for enough people to fill the van before they go so they can hardly be considered timely transport. I think they're about ZAR6 (50p) a ride.
I am doing a lot of walking, let that be said! 20 mins to the Uni every morning. On the upside my transport costs are currently running at £0!
So yeah, its kinda hard to settle into a place where you feel you don't have much mobility. Even moving from the Guesthouse to house nbr 2 a lady from work drove me from one place to the next with my suitcase. They're very car oriented here and they do have a bit of congestion during peak hours but they don't last that long. I imagine Joburg would be much worse though. There are quite a few airport transfer services so I don't think that would be a problem.
It can be hard to find places that you need here as the smaller shops and things aren't listed on the internet. I mean, compare London where every piece of print advertising has the website printed. And every service has a presence on the web. And google hasn't gotten here with streetview yet either. Most have an email address but you don't want to email them, you just want to find out what they offer and the price!
The other thing is that I don't go out at night. Well not by myself and right now I'm here by myself. It is a dangerous place at night alone or in twos as the streets are not well lit. So yeah, I'm kinda bored in the evenings coming from London where I had things on 5 days out of 7. I'm watching a lot of National Geographic (the King Cobra is the largest venomous snake in the world and its favourite food is the rat snake) and catching up on my reading of Calvin's Institutes. I'm quite OK with it now although initially the shock of having not much to do caught me by surprise. But then again, it was like this when I first got to London and when I worked in Bristol. Most other places I've worked at though had a lot of expats or out of town people so you'd hang and go out with them. Anyway, it reminds me that we are foreigners and aliens in this world which is not our permanent home (1 Peter 2:11). OK, not really, I just made that up then! ;) Yes, I'll say it, I miss you guys!!
Food and drink are on the cheap side but not spectacularly cheap (except for Nando's which is about half the London price!). A two piece KFC meal with Coke is about £3.50. A burger from a place called Steers is about £2. Haven't tried McD's yet. Wine is sooo cheap! You can get a bottle of RSA red for £3.
The people here are very friendly and helpful and I don't think I get treated differently by blacks or whites. Oh, and I've seen more Asian people around since the first few days but they're definitely a small minority. A lady at work gives me a lift home half the time even though its 2 blocks from the Uni. Most of my walking time is through the Uni itself from one end to the other. She's currently looking on the intranet for other places for me to rent. It's good getting to know more people at work at least and hearing their thoughts on their country.
Oh, and work, the reason why I'm here. Work was (and will probably continue to be) very challenging as I haven't done the technical stuff for 2 years. Quite a learning curve coming back up to speed and some ambitious and non-straightforward customisations to the software. Getting good experience into RSA is a bit hard I guess as no-one wants to come here because they think its dangerous. I will admit I am not the "Indian programmer" who lives to program but I'm being seen as the reference point when the client team gets stuck! And it is a project with deadlines and go-live dates to meet. Bit stressed with work the first two weeks. A lot of people are away this week attending a PeopleSoft conference in Texas.
Got a trip to the "Cradle of humankind" this Sunday. It's an area where a lot of fossils have been found. There are also a couple of caves and a lion park. Will let you know about it. Got really excited about a trip to Victoria Falls as I found that one of the 3 cheap budget airlines here (yes, they're safe to fly) goes to Livingstone, Zambia. A backpackers there (and hotels too I suppose) will pick you up from the airport. There are a great number of things to do besides seeing the Falls but I want to do whitewater rafting on the Zambezi River and an elephant back safari ride. So got everything connected from Pretoria to Victoria Falls and back! However, I might delay it to July as they don't do the rafting during high water (too dangerous). Kruger National Park is on the itinerary for Easter break. Gotta visit the coast; Durban and Cape Town too. And if you didn't see my post on facebook I'll be back in London in May for a week! Hope to see you all then!
I've never been tall but surprisingly I'm not the shortest person around! I'm taller than some black and white Sth Africans! Guess it depends on what tribe you're from... ;)
I don't think there is daylight savings here and I may finally get why we have it elsewhere. In the mornings its pretty bright by about 4:30am!!! This is crazy! A lot of people start work early and leave work early (a bit like Brisbane) so I'm gonna have to change my sleeping habits I think and get to bed earlier so I get enough sleep. Even with an eyemask I'm not sleeping great past 5am 'cause there is so much light :(
You gotta look out for cars when crossing at lights or designated zebra crossings. In London its more trouble to run someone over than it is to stop and let them cross. Here, well, I'm not so sure...
World Cup tickets have been slashed by 30% for Category 2 and 3 tickets. Seems like they're not getting as many tourists for the World Cup as they first expected. Gotta try and get some tickets once I get an RSA bank account.
The new Gautrain from OR Tambo airport to Joburg and Pretoria will be awesome! It only goes from OR Tambo to Sandton for the World Cup but will eventually go to Pretoria as well.
South Africans are probably the most friendly people-group I've come across. Everyone is friendly at the shops and when you randomly meet people.
Baggage theft from the airports is a big problem here. I thought it was exaggerated but there were about 2 newspaper pages on this consisting of disgruntled customer letters, official response and news article! I'm sure glad nothing was stolen from my luggage!
Went to church on Sunday and just assumed the service would be in English when it was in Afrikaans! Whilst I couldn't understand the actual sermon, everything about the service was pretty familiar. Thankfully it was only an hour long. I think it was a Luteran church due to the plainess and lack of decoration inside. Went to an Anglican English speaking one in the evening. It wasn't too bad but very young 'cause I guess most of them would be Uni students.
What I do wonder is what the church here preached during aparteid? Did they preach equality or was it like in the time of Martin Luther King Jr when other church leaders just told him to wait prompting him to write the book "Why We Can't Wait" and to say this in his Letter From Birmingham Jail: "We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right."
The weather here seems to be quite predictable. Warm, pleasant days followed by thundery showers and lightning in the evenings. And its rain you don't want to be outside in that's for sure! Last night the sky was like a drum it was thundering that much - love the stuff!
Cars here are not as old and banged up as I imagined. I mean, there aren't Ferraris parked on the streets like in London but they're all quite recent model Peugeot, Toyota, Suzuki,etc.
Black people do a lot of the manual work. There are an army of people maintaining the university gardens. The university is quite large and sprawling and there is great landscaping so they do a good job. There are also people who "administer" the parking lot.ie. stop cars so that parked cars can get out. Sorta reminds me of the Philippines.
The percentage of blacks and whites seems to be about 50/50. Some Indians and muslims (don't know what ethnicity) but Asians are rare. I think I've seen 3.
Stationary is in short supply. Usually one of the first things people do when you start a new job is take you to the supply cupboard. Luckily I have my own pens and I'm writing stuff on loose bits of paper! I did get a laptop that is pretty quick. I have my own here as well but rather use the work one that I lock away every night and don't have to lug to and from home. Still waiting on LAN and network access and security card, using Team Leader's in the meantime.
I'm having trouble discerning the 'W' and 'Y' with the Sth African accent. Sometimes when they are saying 'We' I think they've said 'You'. Obviously sometimes context will help you work it out but otherwise it makes for some misunderstanding in responsibility!
Even though everyone can speak English they mostly speak Afrikaans with each other. Afrikaans is a variant of Dutch I think. I'm sure Wiki will correct me but I can't be bothere looking it up.
Unlike London where the supermarkets don't even bag your food for you, in Sth Africa thereis a canning person and a bagging person! Now that's service! There is a plastic bag chargethough but if it goes to the bagger then I have no objections!
I'm not racist 'cause if I was I wouldn't have come to Sth Africa. But everyone looks the same!! The girl next door asked me to re-charge her phone 'cause their electricity got cut off and when I saw her housemate later that evening I thought that was her! And I bumped into her at the supermarket and never would have known if she had started talking to me!
I get a lot of looks. Not bad looks, second looks. There aren't many Asians, I think I can count on one hand all I've seen. I still dress like in London except for the layers so yeah...These other customers were just staring at me when I was in the phone shop talking to the shop guy about a SIM card.
Its not that bad, seriously. You have to be careful but you're not going to be robbed by every second person! Yes, bad things happen to people but that is the case everywhere!
What does one do when there is no internet access? One like me starts to blog again, especially since it doesn't seem like I'll be getting any dinner tonight, but more on that later...
Landed to 8C at 7:00am but the temperature has steadily risen to a nice 25C and hence I won't be needing the scarf and gloves anymore! I tried to not bring them along knowing this but it was too damn cold in London to even try to make it to the Tube station without a few layers! Was carrying a heavy backpack (laptop was inside) and 23kg of suitcase but the Jubilee and Picadilly lines out to Heathrow Terminal 1 were both working and surprisingly not that busy so I was in relative comfort and not too stressed about trying to get out of a packed train. Got through check-in with 23kg as well; you never know what hassle you may get into for being over the 20kg limit. Heard talk on the plane that the rate is £30 per extra kilo! Are they serious!?
The plane was full but didn't feel too closed in as they had a 2-4-2 seat configuration and I was in the aisle of the 2. Had this guy from a group called the 12 Tenors sitting next to me. They were actually in the flight magazine as they're singing some songs at the Mandela Theatre in Johannesburg over the next two weeks. Talked to the guy for a bit and quite likeable but they're all dressed like they're all thinking they're going to be the next Ronan Keating or Robbie Williams! :) Anyway, they were in economy with me so how famous can they be!?
Food was no better or worse than other flight food I've had although they were very generous with the drinks and alcohol. Slightly inebriated customers might be less trouble perhaps? Entertainment was OK. Movie selection wasn't as good as Qantas but the screen is probably a bit bigger. At one point there was no video on demand and I had to switch to watching the movies on the different channels at whatever point the movie was at. Not a big deal I grant you but it took me a little while to work this out since the video on demand had been working previously.
O R Tambo Airport is much like any other airport I've been to recently. Feels like I've done a lot of airports lately with trips to Iceland, Australia, Austria and now South Africa. It's all very modern and efficient and you'd never know you were in South Africa except that people seem to have that African friendliness that I saw in Kenya. Immigration was a little slow as they had to find someone with the right authorisation for my 90 day work visa but there was never any doubt that it would be stamped and I'd be let in.
My driver, yes my driver, was waiting for me at the exit so we hopped in the car to drive to Pretoria. Being a Sunday with no traffic it took about 35mins on the freeway. We talked about the economy and currency trading amongst other more African related things including his claim that Pretoria has the prettiest women in the world. We shall see bwana, we shall see hehe ;)
The Avalon Guest House in Brooklyn, Pretoria is amazing! Much more luxurious than I would have expected. Hopefully I'll be able to post up the photos and you can see for yourself. There are dark wood cabinets, chairs and tables and conjures a rich colonial feel. Too bad I left the pith helmet back in London hehe just kidding!
Being in the guesthouse reminds me of working interstate in Australia as it has the familiar things of other serviced apartments I've lived in; fridge, iron, TV, clock, cutlery, plates, glasses, kettle, bookcase, etc except this place doesn't have any actual cooking facilities. It also reminds me of the isolation of getting settled and finding out where everything is without the use of a car (cf. Rockhampton Qld, Newcastle NSW and Bristol UK, etc). Its not an unfamiliar feeling or situation at least.
I arrived just in time for breakfast and even though I'd had two meals on the plane I wasn't completely convinced that I'd be getting dinner as my itinerary suggested. Guesthouses are built for breakfast and not dinners and I can't find anyone around. There are cookies and some bread things that I have been eating right now and which I'm going to pretend is elf lembas bread... That and some Rooibos tea is my dinner.
After breakfast I showered and basically had a nap for about 2 hours. I don't really consider it jetlag as its only a two hour time difference, more like catching up on sleep after going out all night or something.
All the houses along this street are really nice and the lawns and roads are impeccable! It could be any street in a posh suburb in Melbourne. I say Melbourne and not London because there is more land surrounding these posh houses than you'd see in London. You are aware of the security aspect though as there are signs saying this is a 24 hr armed patrol area and there are electric fences on top of the your normal front high wall fence. And I don't know if the guards are armed but there are black guys on bikes with flourescent jackets cycling up and down the street. So yeah, I feel safe (its not that busy either) but I didn't yet dare to venture out further as I normally would in another country. The driver and everyone else here says the crime is exaggerated since most of it happens in the informal settlements but since there was no strong reason for going further, except perhaps dinner, I didn't go far. Seriously though I'm not overly hungry as I've eaten a lot today already.
