"Winter" approaches

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.

Crime time

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.