Table Mountain Tales

Daddy Days

2010-12-06T11:02:00.000-08:00

My father came down to visit me and get to see South Africa a bit. The first two weeks of his visit he joined an organized tour and visited the most famous places in the country with a group.
The third week he exchanged the companionship of the group for me and the expertise of the professional guide for my amateuristic guiding skills. Although I must say for myself, humbleness aside, that I became quite adept in organizing the different classic trips.

Joining an organized tour is a good way of visiting a country you re not familiar with, but it has a couple of downsides. One of them is that you get told where to go and where to stay away from for safety reasons. Understandably, the tour organizers do not wish to take big risks. Imaginge being the guide who allows a group to walk around freely in an area, and they get robbed. That's bad for business. So before my dad arrived in Cape Town, he had been kept on a tight leash. Hadn't had a chance to escape the protective tour bubble and interact with South Africans, or just walk around them. And with a little help from my friends, I was able to change that.

We were warmly invited by Emil -a friend from work- at his place to have a braai and watch the rugby. That's as South African as it gets.

Minor disadvantage for me was that Emil is the biggest Sharks supporter, and The Sharks beat my team (Western Province) convincingly in the season final. My dad had seen the final on tv, and bought a cap of the winning team. And by wearing his Sharks cap at Emil's place he ensured himself of piles of meat and endless supply of beer. But please don't ask him to name two Sharks players by name.

Part of the standard repertoire I have for visitors is a visit to the winelands. There as well, a friend helped me to step the normal programme up to a unique experience. Xan's dad owns and runs a wine farm in Franshoek, and he took time out of his busy schedule to tell us all about the wine making process. I was, like probably many other people, of the impression that you just needed to squeeze the grapes (preferably by squashing them with bare feet in a big wooden tank whilst playing the bagpipe and eating cheese and bread), add some spices, filter it and poor it in a barrel. But as Dieter - Xan's dad- explained, there is a lenghty, labour intensive process involved in which timing and quantities are crucial. Lynx wine farms is one of the smaller around, but they clearly control the complex process well and they produce high quality wines. The friends and family visiting me during the festive season will get the chance to experience the quality, as I have stockpiled bottles for the dinners.

One lucky strike to make my dad's visit unique was a game by Bafana Bafana (national soccer team) in the Cape Town Stadium. It was the first time they played here. In the wake of the world cup a lot of people support Bafana, in spite of their average performance. So the stadium was actually sold out, and gave an impression of what the world cup games were like. Unfortunately Bafana Bafana lost after dominating the game but not being able to attack properly. The USA barely came close to the South African goal, but were lucky to score after one weak counter attack.

One other thing I like to do is take visitors to Mzoli's when possible. So I took my dad and Thomas, a Belgian friend who was finishing his contract in Cape Town. As you could read in one of my previous posts, Mzoli's is a butchery in Gugulethu. The owner - his name is Mzoli- came up with the idea of not just selling the meat, but to braai it too. The concept became so successfull that now every weekend streetparties are held around the butchery. It is probably the only hangout in a township you can visit on your own without a guide. And that is one of the reasons I like it.

As safe security personell and police try to make it, still it is a township with all the known challenges. As we were driving to the place, I was reading the news paper of that weekend. By pure coincidence, the front page was almost entirely dedicated to unrests in Gugulethu with outbursts of violence against police in which fuel bombs and stones were thrown. The article mentioned that certain ANCYL (African National Congress Youth League) members were suspected to be behind the unrests. The ANCYL has internal elections around this time, and some supporters came up with the strategy to make some living areas uncontrollable. How they think this portrays them as democratic representatives of the people is still a questionmark to me. But surely there is some logic behind it? Fact remained that we were driving towards a possible hotbed of problems, but we checked with police officers, and all was safe around Mzoli's.

The Mzoli experience was complete, we had our meat after a considerably long wait, we had nice chats with other patrons and the kwaito music was pumping. As we were sitting at a table, enjoying our meat, something happened. Now this is a story I'm sure my dad has told a couple of times by now, and it has probably grown out of proportion, so allow me to summarize the events as factual as possible. We were eating our meat when we noticed a part of the crowd in the street all looking at one spot, out of our range. My dad still claims he heard a gunshot, but no one else did and surely not Thomas and I. But something was going on because other people had jumped to their feet too, trying to find out what was happening. As a part of the crowd in the street broke lose and came running our way, girls screaming (why do you they always do that?) panic almost broke lose. Most people just stayed put though, and calm returned. When the party continued, I approached two guys in their twenties that had shown no sign of unrest. Whilst we were on our feet, trying to decide what to do, they sneered "you better look for cover". So I asked them what they though was going on. They had no idea either, but they said they heard no guns. And even with a shootout, you better stay where you are or you might catch a stray bullet.
Both of them had seen gunfights before, something I could not ever imagine witnessing.

As we decided to leave, I recognized Mr Mzoli from a picture in the news paper. I shook his hand and told him how I Love the place. He was courteous but took no real interest in me till I mentioned that we were from Belgium. I thought he was being overly courteous when he followed us to our car and instructed his people to make sure we drove in the right direction.
But in fact he was being overly cautious because what we didn't know at that point was that the night before, the Dewani couple was hijacked a couple of blocks away.

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Mo-vember.
During the month of November, a couple of countries in the world have a cancer awareness initiative. They ask men to grow their moustache, and only their moustache, for the entire month. The aim is to set up sponsorship programmes for growing the Mo and donate the collected money to Cancer Fighting charities. I didn't look to collect money, but grew my mo none the less. And whenever people asked me what i was doing, I told them to go for prostate cancer checks regularly after age 40.
Not the ladies though, they should go for breast cancer check ups after age 50.

Below the results of Mo-vember...

And this month I declare Me-cember as I plan to spoil myself with some gifts, and with the visit of my brother, his girlfriend and my mother!!!

All Things Flying

2010-11-28T11:23:00.000-08:00

There is only 5mm of plastic between me and certain death. Then why am I so calm? I should be panicking. The others seem very tense and keep asking silly questions to keep their minds busy, to push the fear away. They look pale, almost green even, as I should too but I don't. I look closely at the door, it is an assembly of strips of transparent plastic, bolted together with rubber joints so you can roll it up. Clearly a handyman's work, not by a company with safety procedures and strict rules to adhere to. It makes me wonder how many safety systems it has, as I expect would be required for airplanes flying at 6000 feet (2000m).
I look at the back of the airplane and can see the cables leading from the levers in the cockpit to the rudder and flaps. Again not a reassuring thought that I can touch the cables, pull them even
and thus steer the little aircraft. I look through the oval windows and enjoy the stunning view. From this side - Tableview - you have an amazing view of Table Mountain, Signal Hill and Devil's Peak, with the city cradled between them and sprowling out. I see the new stadium and robben island, all under a clear blue sky, not a cloud in sight.
My partner gives me instructions and urges me to come closer. I have to manoever around which is very difficult in the confined space of the one propellor aircraft. We shuffle on the floor, as there are no seats, just one open space. Oks are signalled back and forth. Someone rolls up the door and air comes thundering in. The first pair goes, then it is me. I can feel a change in my
body and oddly enough I think about how my pancreas secretes adrenaline, heightens my senses. I think of how it dilates my pupils, sharpens my hearing, gives me more strength if I should need it. In the mean time I do as instructed, sit in the doorway, feet over the edge, legs folded under the belly of the plane. Head backwards, tilted sideways so I wouldn't knock out my tandem instructor.
For a brief moment we sit there, and I see the absurdity of the idea. I'm looking down two kilometers, to fields, dunes, ocean, cars, houses. I am strapped to a man I met one hour ago,
about to jump out of an aircraft. One minute of free fall, speed increasing every second up to around 300kms/hr, then pull out a piece of cloth tied to our backs with ropes so it would slow - not stop- us falling and allow a certain amount of control over the descend.
I decide not to scream. There is a tumble head first, and we fall. I hear myself screaming, of course. My mouth is dry within a second, from all the air flowing through it. Imagine stretching
your lips around a hair drier and switching it on, same effect. As we are falling, arms and legs open, looking around, a strange thing happened. I felt in control, at ease, really enjoying
the view. I would have wanted to stay up there, I felt perfectly safe. Reality was different of course.
There was a big tug and our body positions changed upright. The noise of wind diminished and we circled down. After an easy landing, I was back on the ground. I had done my first skydive.

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A couple of weeks ago, a big fair on military equipment was held in Ysterplaat, a military air base 30 minutes drive from Cape Town. Different heads of state, army officials and security companies from all over Africa came to admire the latest in military equipment, ranging from tanks and heavy duty vehicules over ammunition and weapons to armor and soldier's gear.
It was combined with a two day airshow of different types of helicopters and airplanes. My knowledge of aircrafts and military equipment is limited to the type of sound they make. Planes go swoosh, helicopters go dugdugdug and guns pow pow (and variations). I am also capable of distinguishing a helicopter from a plane. By locating the propellor(s) I can fairly confidently say if it is a helicopter - when the propellor is on the roof - or a plane - when it is on the side or front. It became a bit difficult with the jet plane concept where there is no propellor at all, and I almost
confused a tank with a fighter jet.
So with no knowledge of the war toys on display, and frankly no interest in acquiring knowledge on them, I just stuck to ushering ooohs and aaaahs. A perfect spring day, with the sun stinging and a cooling breeze, my friend Thomas and I admired the butch vehicules. There were stunt pilots flying in difficult formations, making loops, and helicopters showing how they pick up and displace jeeps, military men parachuting and abseiling out ouf helicopters. Big fat airplanes showing how manoeverable they are. One such carrier aircraft of the US army needed only 300m or so to stop after touching ground. Truely amazing.

In all, a very enjoyable afternoon. I left with reddened skin and the confirmation that I'm not into mechanical stuff.

...and off again

2010-11-22T10:44:00.000-08:00

Before I start this new post a confession, or rather an observation, for when you confess you need to have sinned and I don’t think I have.

I noticed that my drive to write new blog posts fell away completely shortly after my birthday. My birthday must have been the least noticed one since I was born. I received few birthday wishes and almost no gifts. I know I like my share of attention, yet I still don’t see myself as someone who really craves it. However, I was noticeably upset not getting the calls and cards I had secretly hoped for.
Now, of course I rationalized all of this. I know how birthdays in general are hard to keep track of. I myself rely on the birthday calendar in Facebook to keep track of most people’s special day. And I know all of us are submerged in our own lives, doing daily routines, and that with me being away, there is a lack of stimuli to help one remind my birthday.
But in spite me being able to consciously put the feelings of dissapointment in perspective (there is a root in vanity in them, and I don’t subscribe that attitude) I have to confess – there it is- that I did not feel like writing any more. Did I want to punish? Did I seek vindication? Not deliberatly, but it seems like once more the subconscious prevails.

But let’s consider it water under the bridge. I was pleasantly surprised to hear how many people actually seemed to read the scribblings on this blog. You might argue that there is vanity in me writing more to get attention, but then I would stick out my (perfeclty shaped) tongue to you, turn around and walk away, acting like you’re just a whiff of a bad air and stroking my golden blond manes.

Now we’ve got that out of the way, I’ll give you some updates, still in chronological order. Let’s see how many I can post in the coming weeks…

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Cote d'Ivoire, my new experience with traveling in Africa. And what a pleasant experience it was, once i managed to get there...

I had to be in the capital, Abidjan, for two days worth of meetings. With the flight network offering limited possibilities, I had to fly all over the African continent to get there. You might want to have a map of Africa next to you if I describe you my route: From Cape Town to Johannesburg, to Nairobi (Kenya) to Accra (Ghana) to Abidjan. All fun and games, and not too big of an issue if it weren't for the flight from Nairobi to Accra departing with a delay of one hour. One hour delay and I only had 50 minutes to catch my connection to Abidjan, and since basic math applies pretty much all over the globe, I had to find a way to make the plane fly super fast, or would be bound to miss my connecting flight. My hijacking skills are yet to be developed, and the captain wasn't available for discussions (something to do with him busy flying a plane) so I touched ground in Accra too late and had to stay there for the night.

The flight operator arranged a nice hotel, transportation and food. The staff and all people I met were very professional and helpful. I did not need a fixer, like I had in the DRC. I did not need to bribe anyone, and only had to ask or explain everything once. So all in all not a bad experience, I just needed damage control so I would not arrive too late in Abidjan. But first I tried to catch a glimpse of Accra.

Accra was definitely in a different league than the DRC, based on what I saw there. I have noticed you can gauge the (economic) state of a country by things you see in the street:
- the type of cars: a lot of new and/or expensive cars mean there are people with money. A lot of 4x4 vehicles means the roads are in bad condition overall. Vans and trucks mean there is room for large scale economic activity.
- How many people are selling in the street, and what they sell. If they only sell bare necessities- food, drinks, alcohol-, it means either people have no money to purchase other items, or it is too expensive to trade in them. If they sell other items – jewelry, gadgets, books, toys- it means small time entrepreneurs can find the means and the consumers to run a shop.
- The presence of big supermarket chains. They do there homework before they enter the market. Especially the international chains. You could look at them as the flowers of the economy: if the soil is rich enough (consumers) and the climate accommodating (government policies) they will bloom. If one of the two is lacking, they won’t sprout.
- Billboards in the street: are they advertising products or mainly glorifying the ruling president. - The buildings and public infrastructure: how many skyscrapers, how big are the houses, in what state are the houses and roads, …

Measuring Accra on these criteria, they scored the highest of the few cities I have seen in Africa. Hawkers were all around selling all kinds of things from food to phone cards over toiletries to clothes. A traffic jam looked like a moving supermarket almost. There are quite a few international supermarkets, and you can see their advertisements on big bill boards all around (side note: there is a brand called “Uncle Sam” complete with the American symbol and all, selling halaal food. I would love to serve a nice plate of that to some of the hard liner anti-muslim US citizens). Cars are new and sleek, no 4x4s needed here and the houses looked nice and big in the (upmarket) area I walked through.

So Accra was nice, granted, but I needed to be in Abidjan, and as fast as possible actually. The replacing flight would leave the following day in the afternoon, thus making it impossible to do any of the work planned for most of the day.
I moved out to investigate other options. There was an other flight leaving in the morning, from an other flight operator. I decided to spend extra money for this ticket so I could arrive before noon.
The next day, I was on my plane, a standard boeing 737, with luggage all checked in and safely on board, ready for the 45 min flight. When we were airborne for about 15 mins, the pilot came on the radio and mumbled some French words about a defect and that we had to return. There are only a few messages that are unsettling when you are flying, but this was definitely one of them. Even more so for the Ghanaian passengers, who speak English and couldn’t understand the pilot but did see the unrest with their Ivorian fellow passengers.
Back on the ground in Accra, the pilot announced that two electrical generators failed in mid air. Two. I am no plane mechanic or engineer, but two generators failing sounds like a whole lot. Especially considering that I am used to taking flights where a total number of zero generators fail, zero failing generators therefore also being the average per flight. Oddly enough I did not panic at all, I kept reading my book. I figured that I could not do anything myself anyway, and that I could only make the pilot’s job more difficult by panicking.

As we were safely on the ground, it was time to observe a big difference in culture. The passengers on board did not start asking questions to the flight attendands. They had a chat on the situation, yes, and they did not like it. But they remained quite calm. No one started shouting, and there was no individual getting angry with the pilots or anything similar. That would be behavior that could be expected if this were to happen in Europe. Or people getting scared maybe, and nauseous with anxiety. I think the crowd, being almost exclusively African, was accustomed to these type of challenges and therefore able to handle it calmly. They knew something would come up eventually.
But I had bought this ticket to get to Abidjan earlier than my original back up flight, which was still set to leave a couple of hours later.
So I politely asked a stewardess when she thought there would be clarity on the back up plan. She reassured me there were two planes contacted to take the people of this flight. One was secured already, the second plane they were contacting now. But she couldn’t tell me when it would all happen earliest, so I asked the senior flight attendant. Yes, he said, the first plane was confirmed and the other looked like would be secured any time soon. But it still had to land in Accra. A slightly puzzled look from my side. Still to land? Yes, it is leaving Abidjan now and flying this direction, we expect it to land in three hours. I thought about all the hassle and the time it would take before that plane would actually take off. The first plane would be my best bet. So how many people can board that first plane, I inquired. Oh, about six or seven probably. A very puzzled look from my side. Six or seven? Yes sir. And the other plane, how many people would that take? That plane is not confirmed yet, sir. Yes, I understand, but how many people would it take? Around sixty maybe. The puzzlement changed to disbelief. I turned around to the crowd of passengers behind me in the Boeing 737 and quickly estimated around 120 people present. I smiled and thanked him, he did not seem to notice I questioned his contingency plan.

Some other passengers saw me asking questions, and watched me as I calmly stepped out of the plane. I asked for my luggage, and set course to the agency that sold me the ticket. I had 1 hour and a half to sort things out and catch my original plane: get a refund for my ticket, get my luggage, and check in again for the other flight. Much to my surprise, it all went smoothly. I had expected at least some shrewd villains to want to take advantage of my vulnerable state by asking for a bribe or wanting to keep the money for the ticket. That would most definitely have happened in India, I ll take poison on that. But none of that, some of the luggage attendants even scolded a colleague for not being professional because he was slow.

When I boarded that plane, I saw my previous passengers sitting in the hall. Still sweating and puffing and not certain of their options. I wonder how long they remained there.

I finally made it to Abidjan, and was able to do all the things I had to do. But they were very worried there as I hadn't been able to update them on the delays. It's the last time I'll decide to leave my cell phone at home "because I have never needed it before, what could possibly happen"...

Roaming Roads and Reserves

2010-08-18T07:35:00.001-07:00

I took a day off, a Friday, and as such prolonged my already extended weekend ( Monday was a national holiday of some sorts). I ve been yearning for a decent vacation as I haven’t taken any since I arrived here. And that is 10 months now. Since work currently doesn’t allow me taking 2 weeks off, I settled for the long weekend and headed out to the Garden Route.

The goal was twofold. Firstly, to see and experience beautiful nature. Secondly, to finally make it out the Western Province. I haven’t even been close to the borders of the province I live in, because of it’s vast size. Western province has a surface of 129,370 km2, very close to the size ofEngland (130,422 km2) and about 4 times the size of my home country (33,990 km2). So you can understand it is quite a mission to get out of the province, if you only have a weekend’s time.

The plan was basic, the route was chosen, Shafeeka packed and I was ready to rock. In the four days I had, I did four national parks.

First one was called “Wildernis”. I’ll give you a candy bar if you can guess what

that Afrikaans word means in English. The legend goes that a woman asked her fiancé to live together in the wilderness (did I just give it away now?) for a year before they would get married. The guy, one of the clever type, built a hut in the forests near the ocean and named the hut “Wildernis”. And that is as far as the legend goes. Quite boring, I know. No man eating creatures, no daunting challenges, nothing. The same goes for the nature reserve. It was more of a resort with holiday houses around a lake, and it was hard to really feel out in nature.

Not so in the second nature reserve, Knysna forest. The woods used to be the prime spot for lumberjacks to harvest trees for timber, and today it is still a massive forest with a lot of tree giants. As much I enjoyed the thick forest initially, it soon became boring as well. Most of the path I hiked was surrounded by such dense forest that I couldn’t see far. It was almost like walking through a green tunnel.

So I opted for a short walk, and went to see Bendigo – the first gold mine in South Africa.
Again, this sounds more impressive that it really is. A few shafts and old mining equipment was all that was there to admire. I guess if you really like shafts, you would have a blast, otherwise… not so much. So on to better nature reserves.

I reached Tsitsikama n

ature reserve, just across the provincial border and achieved my second goal.Tsitsikama, to me, sounds much more exotic than other places in Afrikaans, which I find quite basic: Bobejaanberg (baboon mountain), Oranje rivier (Orange river), Buffelfontein, (Buffalo spring)… But then again Tsitsikama means “place of a lot of water”, so it just sounds better to me. Perched at the coast of the Indian ocean, and with a number of waterfalls splashing on the rocks, the name is quite suitable.

The camping site at the ocean shore was definitely one of the most beautiful places I have ever pitched my tent.

The nature reserve is stunning, and I definitely will go back there. It has one of the most beautiful trails in South Africa, called the Otter trail. It takes 5 days to

complete the+/- 40 km hike which is named after the indigenous cape clawless otter. I hiked a long the first part of it and was absolutely awed by the beauty of the scenery. I did not see any cape clawless otter, but I did encounter a troop of baboons.

The first thing you should ask yourself when you see a baboon is: “where are the others?”. You won’t find a baboon by itself, it is always in a group. And if you were to find yourself too close or even in the middle of a baboon troop, you can be in very big trouble.

The teeth of a male baboon get as big as those of a lion, and it’s bite is stronger than a dog’s. No facts I’d like to verify myself. Applying the rule that a baboon is always in a group at other times, I have actually discovered quite a few troops whilst other passers by were already gone again.

The final nature reserve I visited was “De Hoop” (The Hope). Splendid reserve with quaint cottages you can rent for the weekend. Animals scattered all over the place, more than you can shake a stick at.

De Hoop is one of the p

laces you have a good chance of seeing whales. From the months of August to October, the whales come to the shores to deliver babies, catch up on some gossip, mate and do other whale stuff. So sure enough, when I walked to the beach, I saw 4 big lumps in the water. Thrilled by this sight, I ran closer and started taking pictures. Half an hour later, still al I saw were lumps in the water.Apparently it is too much to ask of a Southern Right Whale to jump out of the water or flip its tail. I assume heaving your body out of the water is too much of an effort if you weight 90 tons.

With the four nature reserves and all the magnificent sights along the road, I was content. I was even happier about my progress made in South Africanising, and had a couple of reasons for that.

First of all I assumed – and rightfully so- that there was going to be a braai area at the camping site. So I was equipped with brickets, meat and braai utensils. I ate rusks (dry, hard cookies) for breakfast and boerewors for supper. Better still, I had two routine police checks and didn’t incur a single fine! Talk about progress.

But there are still signs that I’m European. As a European, I am used to having petrol stations regularly along the road I drive. With South Africa being such a vast country and so sparsely populated however, you can go for hours on end without having a single chance to buy petrol. So when I went out to De Hoop reserve, for some strange inexplicable reason, I did not fill up my gas tank. I had a quarter left, and knew it would take me around 150kms. Just about enough to go to the reserve and reach the next town. But why not go for certainty and fill up where I am now? I had no idea, I blame the European in me. I ended up waiting for two hours in the reserve, to buy 5 liters of extra petrol to make sure I would reach my next destination. Not entirely South African after all.

more pictures on here (http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=192393&id=730443433&l=e674e82aa8)

Coastal Break Out

2010-07-31T12:20:00.000-07:00

Winter has not really broken through till now. It has been chilly at times, and rainy too, but the majority of the times we have blue skies and pleasant temperatures. Perfect hiking conditions, so I decided to take on Table Mountain again. I had not succeeded in hiking up the mountain yet. I had taken the cable car up before, yes, but I hadn't gone up on own strenght yet. The last attempt failed because the trail indicated simply vanished into tin air, and me and hiking buddy Florens were left scratching our heads, lookingdown a 50m drop. So this time I had a new route and a new buddy.

The hike up was perfect. Flowers are starting to blossom, the slopes are really green after the winter rains, and the sun is pouring warmth without burning skin. Since we left in the afternoon, we planned to hike up and take the cart down. We did not check the time of the last cart down though, which almost costed us deerly.
As we were an estimated 20min hike away from the cable cart station, we heard the alarm calling for the last ride. Not exactly the situation we had in mind. Not long later, we found ourselves huffing and puffing next to a technician who calmly explained we missed the last ride down. "looks like you have a hike left to do, guys. The counter is closed". Sun was setting and a hike down takes around 1.5 hours . Definitely not the plan we had in mind. We tried to apply logic to our predicament: "Sir, you have to go down. Can't we join you?". A chuckle and a puff of a cigarette followed. "I stay here, have to do some repairs tonight." We contemplated moving away from applying logic to downright pleading and begging when we saw restaurant staff getting ready to board the cart and go down. We joined the gang and went down enjoying the astonishing view of a setting sun over Cape Town. A pleasure all of you should see once in your life at least.

With nine months under the belt, and no leave taken, I am really feeling the urge of taking leave. Work doesn't really allow it at the moment, so I have to settle for less. I took a break out trip to a small town called Paternoster, on the West Coast, North of Cape Town. In a small Nature reserve, Rob (a friend and former colleague) and I slept in a nice camp site appropriately called Beach Camp. We did the usual camping things: hiked a bit, braai-ed our food, enjoyed a campfire and enjoyed nature.

As much good the trip did to me, it did not do much good to Shafeeka. Right before we reached destination, she lost thrust and roared like a madened cave bear. Something was wrong and I had a feeling I knew what it was. A visit to a specialist confirmed the diagnosis, a broken exhaust pipe where the pipe links to the silencer. Nothing terminal, but surgery was needed. So now she has a new exhaust, and purrs like a kitten again. The specialist said she needed new breaks and tires as well. I gave in on the breaks but not on the new tires. You shouldn't give a lady everything she needs right away.

FIFA World Cup

2010-07-31T11:34:00.000-07:00

*** note, I had prepared this text some weeks ago, but forgot to upload it so now it is slightly outdated ***

The 2010 FIFA World Cup is over, with my favourite team (Spain) winning their first title ever. No longer do the news bulletins on the radio start with a countdown, and the couple of countdown clocks in town are now rendered useless. One newspaper headlined: "1430 days to go till next world cup", just to show how much South Africa was collectively living towards this tournament.

Previous hosting nations all suffered from a collective depression once the World Cup was over, and I am left wondering how that will affect the people here. One thing is absolutely sure, they showed all the sceptics wrong and organized a superb tournament. The media around the world wrote page after page about all the things that could go wrong in the first African edition of the biggest sporting event in the world. They talked about thieves and rapists, power shortages, terrorist attacks, stadiums not being ready, etc etc... and it is certain they scared away a lot of potential visitors. But none of those dreadful things happened. South Africa was well prepared. They had extra police and security forces around, agreed with neighbouring nations on backup plans should the SA electrical network fail, had navy vessels protecting the oceans and finalized all their world class stadiums in time. If you ever had safety concerns travelling through this country, now was the safest time ever. In fact, the few little incindents that happened were foreign tourists stealing or fighting. The specially erected legal courts gave quick trials to deal with the matter.
Of course there was going to be a lot of debate on a third world - and, moreover African - country hosting the costly event. It is very easily to argue that all those billions spent could have gone to public infrastructure, health care or similar. Then again, building those stadia, roads, hotels and taking care of catering, decoration, etc... provided a lot of jobs, a major cash injection and a positive effect on the economy in the middel long run. You can keep talking back and forward with $ amounts, I am personally convinced the biggest gain is in the untangible
benefits.

The feeling of togetherness and collective achievement can not be expressed in $. But it is certainly there. Never before have the South Africans been so united in supporting their national team Bafana Bafana. Never before have they all followed the world cup so closely. The vast majority of the country was debating the games, the rules, the results and dubious referee discussions, where a couple of months ago the news papers had a weekly feature of explaining the rules and introducing the football stars. Even South Africans themselves are pleasantly surprised that everything ran so smoothly. They certainly believe in themselves and each other a lot more. Let's hope they can bank on this feeling for a long time to come.

On a personal level, I am very happy to have been so close to all of this. Everyone knows I would not have followed the world cup so closely if it hadn't been on my doorstep. When I had to apply
for the tickets, I wasnt sure how many to buy. I applied for 4 games and got 3 tickets. But by sheer stupid luck of my friend Florens (the dutch guy you see on the side here), who unexpectadly got 4 tickets to all of the games, I got to go to witness more legendary games.
It was actually fun to see the likes of Maradonna, Nessi, Ronaldo, Forlan, Torres, Xavi, Villa and all those other stars in real life.

A taste of the DRC

2010-07-02T00:31:00.000-07:00

One of the reasons why I applied for the job I currently have, was the possibility of travelling through Africa. It gives me the chance of going to places I would otherwise never consider spending scarce holiday time on. And that definitely applies to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where I had to go to for a week.

I had to go to a place called Matadi, in the Western part of the country. So far away from the fights with the rebels in the Kivu provinces bordering Rwanda. In fact, the country is so big that thedistance from Matadi to those places is roughly the same distance as from my home town

to the Polish-White Russian border. And with their road infrastructure it would take weeks to

reach Matadi if they wanted to. So that leads us to two conclusions: one - I was safe from warlike violence and two - the road infrastructure of the DRC is bad.

In fact you can generalize that last statement to pretty much all infrastructure. Buildings look like they haven't been repaired in decades, which is probably also the case. The port I visited was build by the colonial power Belgium, in the early twentieth century. Since then most probably nothing was done to maintain the port in good condition. One indication would be the metal pillars supporting the quay side that were once as thick as a grown up man, and now are as thick as that man's arm. I assume this is what you get in a country that had a brutal civil war until recently and is one of the poorest in the world. How do you build up something if you don't have the building blocks to begin with?

I flew from Cape Town to Kinshasa, and then needed a short flight to Matadi. It is only 360 kilometres or so away, but because of the bad roads, you would lose too much time by driving there. You'd rather lose time, but slightly less of it, by waiting in a small airport for a flight with a blacklisted flight operator. I still haven't found out why they are blacklisted, and it was not that I had any other options, but it would have helped to know if I should be worried, or really worried. So there I was waiting for my flight with "Air Tropical".

The symbol of "Air Tropical" is a big elephant, which is probably the one creature in the whole animal kingdom that is the least likely to merily fly around. I guess "Air Tropical" can use a lesson or two in marketing. In spite of the ill chosen symbol and th

e blacklisting, wasn't really worried, to be honest. I figured that the pilots were not planning on crashing themselves, and since their job description says they have to actually be in the plane, I was convinced I would be ok flying with them. Still I couldn t help but looking at what they were doing, but that was only because I could look directly in the cockpit. It was undoubtedly the most

adventurous flight I have ever taken: a two propellor airplane with only 20 passengers, landing on an air strip consisting of trampled earth, and goats walking on it as we landed.

I was indeed safe from military conflicts, but there were potential other threats. Several exotic diseases with cool names but vicious effects were looming. For some of them I had a series of shots and a booklet to prove it. That vaccination booklet is as important as your passport, I was not allowed in or out of the country without it.

A disease you can't get vaccination s for is malaria, so I needed a way to deal with this omnipresent disease. Malaria is caused by a parasite that nests in your liver. All five types of malaria (there are 5, yes, there used to be 4 known but they discovered a new type recently) are transferred by the bite of an infected mosquito, turning that small creature into one of the most feared insects in the world. Malaria can be treated, but 2 types will never get out of your system.

You can imagine how happy I was to see the windows of my hotel room were equipped with a fine mosquito net. I was less enthused by the army of mosquitoes kept inside my room by that very net. A strategy was required. For part one of the strategy, I generously applied repellant all over me, making me smell like a giant bush of weird herbs. Secondly I wore a long sleeve shirt to sleep, and turned the airco down.

Mosquitoes only bite when the temperature is high enough. By making it nice and cold I was hoping to take their apetite away. And lastly I hopped and skipped around my room smacking and squashing as many mosquitoes as I could, wich made the walls and ceiling look like I emptied a tiny paintball gun on it

. I also improved my bruce-lee-squash, you know the one where you quickly grab a flying bug out of the air. I even made the appropriate kung fu squeels. As a final measure of precaution, I off course took malaria profylaxis (pills) and drank gin and tonic. The tonic contains kinine, a substance that makes mosquitoes not want to bite you.

With diseases taken care off, I more or less covered everything within my span of control. Bigger trouble makers that I could influence less were people. You see, the DRC is one of the countries were corruption is part of every day life. Coming from a first world country, with functioning governmental structures, functioning law and business rules, it is hard for me to deal with corruption. I don't like it, I don't condone it, I think it is wrong. But in many places where there are no structures, where law does not function an everyone is massively underpaid, corruption is a natural outcome. You give a guy a badge and he has power. You want to do something, you need a stamp or a paper from a guy with a badge.

But guess what, there is a problem or it is going to take longer than foreseen, or no no that is not possible... till a bank note appears and dissapears again. Then the papers show up, the problem is solved or they did find a solution. In other words, you need to lubricate a bit here and there. But in a poor country, a lot of lubrication is needed. And there are a lot of badges that need to provide paperwork. Who do you pay off? Who do you stand up to? How much should you give? Luckily the company provided help here. They provided a "fixer" for every transit I made in the DRC.

My fixer in Kinshasa was a middle aged, scrawny man. Neetly dressed, with spectacles balancing on a thin nose, he walked through a maze of people at the airports. Greeting many guards, talking to some, shaking hands, sometimes handshakes with bank notes in them, sometimes not. He made the process smooth. If I had to do all those things myself, it would have taken much longer and cost me dearly. I had read about travellers in the DRC having to buy their luggage back from airport personnel , or loosing their vaccination booklet because they handed it to the wrong customs officer. He also warned me not to take pictures.

I obviously had the exact opposite in mind. It turns out that the Congo is very wary of espionage. With several wars in recent past and ongoing fights I assume it is normal to be scared of any person documenting stuff. Coincidently, on my flight back to South Africa, I read in the newspaper that two Swedes were sentenced to death in the DRC, on the account of espionnage!! That could just as easily have been me! And also they had killed their driver or something, which I wasn't planning on doing, but still.

I assume you want to hear me describe what Kinshasa and Matadi were like? I am not going to spend too much time on that and let the pictures do the talking. Kinshasa is the dirtiest city I have ever visited, and that includes the cities in India. Very dusty, and soot everywhere because waste is burned in the streets and ashes mix with the sand. Traffic is a nightmare, as the roads

are in pispoor condition. But people smile a lot, and are friendly. They also like to remind me of the role of the Belgians in their recent history. Some did it to make me feel guilty, and

would be more inclined to give them almonds?, others because they seemed they finally wanted to confront a Belgian directly. Most remarcable was Yves, one of the guards at Matadi Airport. He blamed Belgium for not being a good coloniser. He said we should have left them with a Belgian language to speak, like the English did in Kenya. So I told him we were talking in French,

which is a Belgian language. But I was wrong, he said, because we speak Flamand et Wallon. How did French then end up being spoken in the Congo? He didn t know, but I was wrong and I was a bad colonist, because also - we did not found any university there. The whole conversation made me uneasy of course, but he could have made me feel much worse. In stead of telling me we should have founded universities, he could have questioned me on why "my king" came to steal copper, rubber and diamonds. Or why the Belgians choreographed the assasination of Lumumba, or why we allowed mercenary armies to cause bloodshed in his country, or why we backed up Rwandese rebel fractions invading the East, or why the Belgian army fought Arab slave traders only to start making slaves of Congolese themselves... I guess he either did not know about those dark pages in history, or those pages were written in Wallon in stead of French.

I'll start rounding off here, because I could write a lot more but I would digress from the reason of this blog. I'll just say I have seen, heard and read a lot of things which I find very fascinating.

The whole experience was a very good one, but I am glad it was not on my own account I went there. The Congo is very expensive, because everything is imported. The prices in the local supermarketare a lot higher than the ones in Belgium or Cape Town. Which is probably why someone is running a business importing goods from the Colruyt. That is right, everywhere I looked were items with the unmistakable "everyday" label, and prints in both French and Dutch. Oh, and the hotels I stayed in, even though they were average class, cost 240 EUR a night. So the plans I had of maybe making my way back to Europe in a car across the continent are put on ice for now.

Sport addicted

2010-06-01T13:15:00.000-07:00

Never thought I would turn in to a real fan of any sport, but lately that is exactly what I have been doing.I ve been following the rugby competition here closely, going to every Super 14 game in Cape Town I could and even following games on television.
Because obviously I don't have any ties to any of the teams here, I chose the team of Cape Town as the side I would support. And it so happens that this team, The Stormers, had a great Super 14 season. In fact, they played the final of the Super 14 last weekend but lost against the Blue Bulls from Pretoria. So not the dreamed ending for the Stormers, but they had a fantastic season none the less. For me of course, it is even more fun to join a winning team.

As most people know, rugby is a big thing in South Africa, but mainly for the upper economic layer of society. That is a result of rugby being played at universities (they have an own competition) and because only whites were allowed to play it in the Apartheid time. In Cape Town you will see that the supporters are mainly Coloureds and Whites, the Blacks like football (soccer) as their prefered sport. In spite of this historically grown division, rugby is played more and more by people from all backgrounds.

You could say that South Africans are obsessed with sports. Next to rugby and football, they are crazy about cricket and golf, and follow a whole list of other sports. Most people played at least two or three sports when they were young. No wonder you find so many athletic types around here. Although having all these beaches, lovely nature and nice weather will probably have a hand in it too.

Any activity that requires a bit of energy can be turned into a competition and will be broadcasted on one of the 6 sports channels they have here. One example is professional sport fishing. I don't know what the appeal is in it, but you can see bulky guys fishing in rivers, ponds or oceans. They talk about the bait they use, the lines, the hooks, how to reel in the fish etc...

And they do catch the biggest fish imaginable, all shown on television. I wonder if those professional fishermen have large fan bases and if they have home grounds where they host fishing competitions and enjoy home advantage because they know what lure the fish like best...

To show all those sports, there are televisions everywhere. Every bar or restaurant, no matter how fancy or run down, has at least one television set to show sports. And sports are the one thing people seem to watch the most here. I am guessing now, but maybe they watch sports that much because they don't have that many soap operas or good entertainment on television. Surely, they have their own soap operas, like "Sevende Laan" which has the classic storylines of adultry, cancer, treason, illegitimate children and above all ever lasting love! (interestingly this show has conversations in 3, maybe 4 languages: Zulu, Xhosa, English and Afrikaans).

An other reason why maybe South Africans are so hung up on sports - and I am venturing a guess again- is because they are very good in a couple of sports. They have world class teams in cricket and rugby, they have extremely good golf players and other athletes like Oscar Pistorius aka Blade Runner (the paralympics sprinter with blades for legs who was olympic champion), Caster Semenya (the lady accused of being a man, remember that riot?). For a society that has so many great challenges in other areas, I can understand they would like to emphasize and enjoy the successes they have.

And now the sports question on everyone's lips is: will Bafana Bafana be a success? Bafana Bafana is the national football team of South Africa. Now, it would be appropriate to say that they suck. And that is a bit of an issue when you are hosting a world cup. Especially because no hosting nation was ever eliminated in the first round. So the yardstick of Bafana Bafana's success appropriately became: getting through the group phase (alive). They needed a man to turn a jumble of mediocre players in a strong team that could face the likes of Mexico, Germany, Uruguay etc... So they hired a Brazillian coach. He has been working those Bafana players for months now, in training camps in Germany and Brazil. And seems to be succeeding so far! He booked 11 victories in a row now. He'll need those success stories because Bafana is in the toughest pool of the tournament.

In 9 days, South Africa will play Mexico in the opening game. Be sure that you'll be able to cut the tension with a knife, and that the whole country will sound like a hornet's nest, because of those damn vuvuzelas.
I won't be there to see the game though. Not even on television, because at that time I will be travelling back from Matadi in the DRC. Just in time for the rugby game of France against South Africa, for which I still have to buy tickets...

Braai-bing

2010-05-09T13:22:00.000-07:00

Today I was involved in a car accident. Nothing bad, don't worry, I am fine and Shafeeka only has a couple of scratches on her back bumper. I left home to go on a shopping spree (which I still did and I bought some nice clothes but that's besides the point) in Canal Walk, a mall some 15 kms outside of Cape Town centre.
As I was waiting to turn into a street the car behind me was pushed against Shafeeka because a taxi had slammed it in the back. Luckily no one got hurt, the taxi driver, the man in the car behind me and his wife and child, and lil'ol' me, all unscathed. The two other cars were in a bad state though.
The taxi driver was speeding, and because I was waiting right behind a little hill to take a turn, he couldn't see me and the other car standing still. He slammed the breaks, but too late, with the known consequence. The taxi driver looked subdued, of course, but also very tired. His eyes were little slits, and he worked a bit slow. My hunch is that he just ended his 24 hour shift and was exhausted.
You see, most taxi drivers have to work 24 hour shifts in alternating days. So one day of driving, one day at home, etc... You often see the drivers sleeping in their cars, somewhere along the road for that reason. I have spoken with quite a few taxi drivers and most of them have this kind of rotation. Obviously that makes me wonder about issues as safety and reliability, and I wouldn't be surprised to hear that these types of accidents are quite common.

The little family had Malawian nationality, and when I presented my Belgian passport to the police officer I saw a slight hint of confusion taking over his face. As if he was thinking: "Three cars, three nationalities? Jasses!".
That might have been the reason that he dismissed me rather fast. Within 5 minutes I was allowed to go. I was spared the hassle of written testimonies and other paperwork. A quick look at Shafeeka's behind was enough to assess that I had no damages to claim and apparently that means I was no longer required to stay.
I hope the Malawian family will be able to sort things out with the taxidriver, because my gut feel tells me they will face a lot of hassle to get their damages paid out.

In earlier posts I told you about my dutch friend and colleague Florens, who became a father here in Cape Town shorlty after we arrived. His wife Claudia and their baby daughter Charlotte went to the Netherlands for a three week holiday. That means that Mr Florens regained a bacherlor status - to a certain extend of course. It was very easily decided that we had to do all kinds of things that you can't do with a baby carriage, and possibly a wife attached to it. Hence the mountaint trip I told you about, and a couple of parties of course. I also suggested to give Florens a township experience, by going to Mzoli's.

Mzoli's is a bouchery in Gugulethu, one of the biggest townships of Cape Town. They offer a very simple yet fun formula: You go to that place, order your meat, and they'll braai it for you. You can then eat it whilst enjoying the crowd and a beer bought in the local liquor store (which is basically a garage turned into a store). All of this steeped in township flair, which mainly means a lack of organization and hygiene, a good portion of chaos a lot of very friendly people and overall a lot of fun.
Over the years, Mzoli's has become a hangout for people that want to see and be seen. They drive up in their (sometimes fancy) cars, show off their sound systems, have a drink and dance and chat a lot. The success is slowly but surely changing the area. More garages are turned into shops or bars.
However, if you want your legendary Mzoli meat, you have to stand in line for a looooooong time, and you have to fight your way to the braai where you have to try to get your meat braai-ed before others do.
The first time I went there, me and my friend Rob decided to bribe one of the guys in order to jump the queue. But much good did it do, after a while we found out everyone was bribing the cooks!
The most amazing part about going there are the people. It is so easy to strike up a friendly conversation. And it is not an exception that someone tells you how much they appreciate it that white people are coming to a township to party and see how the majority of the South Africans really live. Those are often older people coming over to shake your hand and thank you for coming. I imagine its because they really experienced the days of apartheid the fullest (apartheid was only abolished in 1994).
Still if you go there, you shouldn't forget you're in a township. Crime rates are high, a lot of thieves and robbers are lurking, waiting for a chance to jump you. You're often warned for this, but so far I haven't seen, heard or experienced any of that. Let's hope it stays that way.

Flippin' fish, gorgeous gorge and other things...

2010-04-30T12:58:00.000-07:00

41 days to go till the world cup… a countdown mentioned everywhere on a daily basis: in shops, on the radio, in the office, on television,… and while Cape Town and the rest of South Africa is counting down, I am counting up and… reach 6 months. Yes, highly estimated reader, I’ve been scurrying around on this speck of the globe for half a year now. 25% of the assumed time I’ll spend here. Does that mean that I have had enough? Not at all! It only makes me realize how I have to hurry up to do all the things I want to do here before I relocate.
In line with this thought, I have done a couple of wonderful things in the past three weeks, too much to mention in detail one post. So I’ll have to stick to a brief description and make sure I have a lot of pictures to acquiesce in your longings.

First of all, I’ve had quite a few friends from work visiting me from overseas (a nice expression essentially meaning “everything outside Africa”). I had my share of touring Cape Town and surroundings and eating out. Because with so many lovely places to dine, and at such prices, that is what you do.
I have become quite adept at giving tours in and around Cape Town. Soon the wine lands and Cape Peninsula will have no more surprises for me.
Although all these visitors had very different backgrounds and interests, they were all stunned by the beauty of the landscapes. And none of them were raped, mugged, cheated on, threatened or anything. So if you still had doubts of coming here, start planning and let me know when you’ll be coming.

Next to all of those visits, I went camping again. This time I was invited by a frolleague (friend + colleague) to join him on a trip. It must have been the first time I went away for the weekend without Shafeeka. She wasn’t angry with me, so I take it she didn’t mind. We went to the Cederbergen area, to a remote little place called “Suikerbossie”. We had a braai (not a barbecue because that runs on charcoal or brickets in stead of wood) and beer, and tried some fishing. I even bought a fishing rod and hooks and bait and all that, to do the proper fishing thing. I had tried fishing before in my life, but without the proper gear and no success (not sure if it’s correlated), so I went all out this time. The prey was yellow fish, and I am still not sure whether that refers to its behaviour or its colour. In a fishing manual it said that this type of fish usually bites between midnight and 6 am. And sure enough, almost at the exact stroke of midnight, we finally had movement on our lines. Two fish at the same time bit the bait on our two rods. Unfortunately our coordination was left to be desired at that time, on the account of us having to wait so long and having had a drink or two. I’ll rephrase: we were too drunk to reel in the fish. We broke one line, and on the other a fish the size of my under arm slipped out of our hands. But off hand, the best fishing experience I ever had.
Next to that, we went to a gorgeous little gorge not so far from where we camped. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

An other big event worth spending some ink on is my visit to Maputo. One of the projects I have been working on evolves around contract negotiations with the terminal in the capital of Mozambique. It wasn’t a long trip, and not far either, but it was an interesting experience. We only spend one night there, and were of course focused on the meeting at hand so it was not like I was able to explore the city. Still it was very clear that Maputo is in a whole different category than Cape Town. Buildings and roads seem to be crumbling down. Quite a few roads were tarred before, but are turning into sand roads again. Here and there are potholes, some so big you could lose a 4x4 vehicle in it. Service in bars and restaurants is even slower than in South Africa.
As most countries in Africa, Mozambique is struggling with widespread corruption, lack of education, failing government apparatus and virtually no public infrastructure (roads, trains, waterways,…). I saw the clichés of lack of planning and low sense of urgency confirmed. All of this is very present in the terminal as well. I’ll illustrate with some anecdotes next to the pictures.

The terminal does not have good paving, in general. Causing basic problems as you can see in the picture.

These gentlemen work for Damco (a sister company) and were at the terminal to sort out an issue with a bulk delivery of coal. The bags were broken. To illustrate the lack of planning: there was no dedicated area for bulk goods, they just dropped the bags where there was space and it was convenient.

Below you can see how the wheels of a tractor are slipping. The tractor had to push a couple of train wagons forward, because they did not seem to have a proper engine train. The big buldozer did not have problems pushing the lot forward.

A bulk delivery of sulfur ( a toxic if I'm not mistaken) was piled up somewhere in the terminal. The wind blew it around freely.

The two cranes are quite old and need some work. The terminal has very big plans to change the infrastructure and the way they work. Soon the improvements will be visible.

If you want to see more pictures on both events, please go to this album and the other

Take care!

In search of the bunny.

2010-04-08T11:53:00.000-07:00

I'm quite convinced now that the easter bunny is a European rotant. Not an African one at least, because I haven't seen it hopping around here, let alone found some chocolate eggs. And I even went looking more than 200 km out of Cape Town but nothing. I did see some very nice sights, let the pictures speak for themselves (below).
I took the opportunity of the prolongued Easter weekend to go camping in the Cederbergen ("bergen" means mountains). I refrained from wild camping for a number of reasons: it was just me by myself - alone, it is very dry and didn't want to start a bushfire, and they have creatures here that can actually kill you. So I chose the certain safety and mild comfort of a camping site. And next to avoiding the aforementioned risks, I also found hot water and some genuine South Africans as company. Very talkative guys that don't shy away from a drink. Actually it would not be a lie to say they really liked a drink, although they were still very well behaved. As so many drunken people do, they started talking about politics in South Africa. The inspiration did not only come from the alcohol in their circulation, but obviously also from the recent brutal murder on a prominent extreme right Afrikaner politician named Eugene Terreblanche. Mr Terreblanche had some terrible beliefs and was also killed in a terrible way. Food enough for conversation around a camp fire.

The trip itself was awesome, although not flawless. I made some rookie mistakes that are simply ridiculous, really. I had decided to go camping on the very last minute, so in my haste to throw my stuff in Shafeeka's trunk I had forgotten a few essentials. I didn't have fire, flash light, mousquito repellant and to top it off: no tent pegs. So I had to improvise a bit to sort things out. Luckily I found some easy solutions quickly. I broke the legs of a broken camping chair I'd found in pieces and used them as pegs. A local shop provided matches, candle and mousquito repellant. So I undid the shameful mistakes. Hikingwise it was not the best trip either. But this time I was not to blaim. The road I had chosen on my brand new map was - just like the desired easter eggs- simply not there. I was looking around for it, walking through the area, following the river along which the road was supposed to run, but could not find the pathway. After more than an hour of crashing through the bushes, whilst tapping a long thin stick in front of me to scare away snakes, I found myself walking through a dried out part of the river bed. I would have powered through if I hadn't been alone, but my sensible side won it over my reckless side and I made my way back. It took me an other hour and a half to lumber through the thicket and through the river but I got back without problems. It was a bit frustrating but satisfying at the same time. Can you have those two feelings at the same time? I think so; I was happy being out there in nature, trying to find my way by myself, but frustrated that I couldn't get to the top of the mountain I had planned to climb.

The Cederbergen area is very beautiful and is yet again very different from the winelands, the Table Mountain area or the Atlantic Seaboard. It is famous for its citrus plantations. In springtime it is supposed to be full of flowers so I will definitely go check that out. And I would like to see some San (Bushmen) rock art there too as they have quite a few sites with those old depictions. You can also visit the rooibos tea plantations there which is an other reason for me to go back.

Fine...not fine.

2010-03-25T11:41:00.000-07:00

Since I seem to get the most reactions when I post pictures, I will end this post with a couple of shots I took during early morning hikes. Some have you might have seen in on Facebook already.

I got up at 5 am a couple of mornings, to climb the Lion's head and see the sunrise. A very satisfying thing to do, I can tell you. And the hike allows to goback home, have a shower and still be in the office on time. I did the same thing last Monday. Although it was a national holiday, and we didn't have to work, I got up at 5!
I know what you are not thinking: what does the national holiday celebrate? I have asked a couple of South Africans that very question, and they didn't know. Heritage day? That student massacre thing? Day of independance? I looked it up for you, it celebrated "human rights day", and more specifically the fact that human rights were included in the constitution ("grondwet" in Dutch). Well, that sounds good enough to celebrate. But wouldn't human rights be a given? In the country that invented Apartheid, it sure wasn't. And now that country has one of the most progressive consitutions in the world.

Paying traffic fines is not really a human right, but more of a civil duty. And one I will have to fulfill since I managed to harvest two traffic fines. Not happy with that, I can tell you. One fine I got for not being able to produce a valid driver's license. I have an international driver's license, but I simply forgot to carry it on me that day. So after a lot of feeble searching, stuttering and blushing, I had to listen to the traffic officer explaining me I got fined. I could not think of any valid excuses, which made the experience sting even more.
The second fine was for not displaying that Shafeeka (my car) is registered. Of course she is, all her paperwork is absolutely fine. But it turns out I have to display that as well. One of the many papers you get at the traffic department, has a round disk with dates, codes and lettres on it. That disk goes against your window. If the officer can't see it, he'll fine you even if you are ok with your paperwork.
Now, I am sometimes quite gullible, blue eyed and overall not sceptical enough. As was the case now: I knew every car had a sticker on its window shield. So did mine. So when I got my papers, I asked if I didn't need a sticker. The lady answered that they were out of stickers.
"Ok, ma'am, but don't I need to stick anything to my windshield?" was my shrewd question. The reply: "We know you got registered". So I thought that was that, end of story. Very gullible, not sceptical. I had this mental image of tax voucher stickers (wegenvignet) you find in Switserland or Austria you know: sticker with details printed on it. I assumed that they would be able to key in a code in a system to check. But that is not how they roll here. Here they are talking about a sticker on the one hand, and a paper disk you cut out on the other hand. You get the stickers in most of the garages and gas stations, they are all over the place.
So it is only when I held the fine in my hands that I started asking myself more questions and uncovered that I simply had to cut out the dates, codes and letters in a nice round shape and stick it to my window with a normal sticker...

So what is a very human reaction in such a situation? You try to blame someone else! Try to dodge the fine, say you didn't know and mumble "no one told me". My colleagues didn't tell me because it is either common knowledge if they are local, or -for the other expats- because they bought their cars off a official dealer that took care of it. I didn't, I bought off a private person so I had to do everything myself.
But I would not have a good case in court because on the paper, right next to the disk it says:

Case closed... I'll have to pay. But I am now waiting for the reminder to come first. Maybe the adminsitration doesn't come through within these two years. A bit risky though because they actually come and arrest you, throw you in prison and all that if you don't pay fines...

And now for those pictures.... you can find more on http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=155546&id=730443433&l=5bbb9efa05

Safety blanket

2010-03-08T12:06:00.000-08:00

I am a man on a mission, and the name of the mission is Mission P.
The reason why and the ill hidden pun will become clear shortly.

Cape Town is moving into autumn. At least, that is what the calendar tells us, because I don't notice it. By my standards it would still be Summer. Days are still clear, hardly a cloud in the sky and the sun is blazing. Yesterday was the worst day of all. Temperatures peaked at 45C and it hardly cooled down in the evening.
Initially I hadn't noticed that it was that hot. I jumped into Shafeeka and hit the road. We ended up in beautiful Stellenbosch, a short hours drive from my front door. Shafeeka transformed from a VW Golf into a little oven on wheels because man it was hot on the road. Shafeeka doesn't have airco (that's from after her time, don't tell her because it upsets her) so I usually open the window to cool down. It is the best feeling, normally. This time there was little to no ocean breeze to cool things down, and the air coming in felt like a hairdryer blowing in my face. Closing the car window would make it worse of course, so I could only power through.

In Stellenbosch I just parked somewhere randomly and started walking around. I love exploring a town like this. In Europe it is as easy as pie, you park around the biggest church or market square and off you go. Why the market square? Well that is usually the centre of the town, and all major roads lead towards it. You see, most places that date back a while are all built like wagon wheels: market and or church in the middle, main roads leading from the outside to the centre square and all that. The Medieval design you know. Fair enough, but in the middle ages they had nomads here. Hunter gatherer tribes, moving around. They didn't really build anything. If three lumps of clay would have been placed on top of each other, that would have been considered a brick watchtower. So certainly no wagon wheel designs for cities. Usually towns here are just one main road, fanning out in a couple of side roads. And they are so small that you have to start breaking 2 kms before the first houses or you'll only stand still at the other side of town. Paarl, Ceres, Franschoek, Muizenberg, Simon's town,... all the same thing. So I was quite happy to see that Stellenbosch was a bit different.
I had deliberately aimed for the Stellenbosch university. The campus is stunning. Check out the pictures, isn't that a campus where you would like to (pretend to) study?

It was only when I walked around that I noticed how hot it was because I had less energy than usual. I scurried around from left to right, looking for cool liquids to drink. Smoothies, milkshakes, juices, water, I drank it all. I felt like a water balloon about to burst. But I seemed to transpire it all. In spite of the vast amounts of fluids I downed, not a drop of fluid would ehm, dawn down there.
Hence Mission P. I kept drinking in the hope that some moist would make it to my kidneys. I had to switch to beer to make it happen, but it worked.

So yesterday must have been the hottest day since I came here, and the hottest day for Capetonians in a long time too. Usually the evening cools down nicely thanks to an ocean breeze.
A lot of houses, and car owners, count on this breeze because they don't have an airco installed. Nor a central heating for that matter. This time, the night did not cool down at all.
It must have been around 35 degrees in the middle of the night. Colleagues told me this morning how they moved to their basement to sleep. Deprived of a basement, most of them just had a tough night like me.

After a successful Mission P, I opted for a Mission ZZZ. Window open, no sheet, that's how this cat normally sleeps. Not possible, too hot. I don't have a fan, and didn't have any clothes to take off any more. So the experiments started. I first took a cold shower. Helped a bit, and only for a short while. Then drinks with lots of ice. Not so much. New steps had to be taken, but it was hard to think of better ideas with the drowziness of half sleep in my head. I decided to soak a big towel with cold water and hang it on a rack next to my bed. Theory: the coolness of the wet towel would radiate on me, it would absorb the vicious heat and overall get rid of the deprivation of sleep. Hail the towel! Practise: not so much. So there I was, half awake, feeling too hot with a wet towel dripping next to me. Touching it felt nice. So I touched it some more. I don't know if I first started hugging it or not, but the soaking wet towel ended up draped over my entire
body. That's right, I slept under a cold wet towel, in my bed. And it worked. Laugh all you want, it improved the situation. I even ended up wetting the towel again (in the sink, not Mission P)
because it felt so good.
Not a feat I'd like to repeat. I added a big fat fan to my shopping list.

Luckily, tonight is a lot cooler. So I'me hit the sack.

yours,

Milestones

2010-02-28T08:54:00.000-08:00

End of February already, 40 degrees this afternoon and I am sweating profusifely. By the time I have finished this text I expect my sofa to be soaked in sweat. I might lick the seat to salvage some of the salt.
That we reached the end of another month also means I have officially broken a couple of funny records. Amongst them: the longest time I have been away from home and the longest period of uninterrupted sunny days I was able to enjoy. That last one makes most South Africans laugh with disbelief.
But this milestone is not one that just marks good events. I think it also heralds the most difficult period in the living abroad cycle (just to give it a name). That is based on what I have heard of and seen happening to a lot of expats. The first 3-4 months everything is new and exciting. You spend a lot of time finding stuff out, sorting out paperwork and practicalities. And all that takes up a lot of time and effort. Tiring and sometimes frustrating, yes, but it gives you something to do. Now that most of those things are sorted out, you are left with even more time on your hands but still not enough things to do to fill it up naturally. That might sound a bit hard to believe, especially if you are in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, with good weather and ample outdoor activities to do, but it is true. Because no matter what you do, you end up doing it on your own with a couple of nice strangers for company at best. So once you lose your personal drive to go out and explore, there is a real danger of just sitting on your ass. Next to that there are hardly any social events like birthday parties or family visits to attend, no old friends you can give a call to go and do something. So you end up spending a lot of time on your own. Fortunately I am reasonably good at being on my own, but I like to have a busy agenda and meeting a lot of people too.
I am not announcing my first depression, if that is what you think. I was merely sharing the idea that I think the toughest part is yet to come.

Now to create some more happy vibes, some random positive news: I bought a nice big dining table, I bought a powerful laptop, I am now a PADI certified scuba diver, I do not have HIV, I got a haircut, ... And because I now have a good laptop, I am able to upload some more pictures. It takes ridiculously long though (2h45 min so far for 50 photos), so please please enjoy the pictures a lot !

Yesterday, when I went to bed I was not alone in my room. Much to my surprise a brown African bird awaited me there. Usually I don’t mind a goodlooking bird in my bedroom, but this one actually had wings and a beak. It was a pigeon that flew through the open window and decided to sleep there. As you can see on the picture it must have been there for some time. I caught the creature and then
A) broke its neck for shitting on my shoes and threw it out of the window
B) tied a rope around it’s leg and flew it like a kite
C) clipped its wings and stuffed it’s cloaca so it wouldn’t shit anymore and kept it as a pet
D) all of the above

the answer was C)

African wildlife in my own room, how cool is that?
A thought I ll keep in mind when cleaning up it's ehm legacy.
I uploaded some pictures on the area I live in, and on a wine tasting trip I did. to see the pictures, click on the link (picture) at the bottom of this page.

All the best,
W.

The answers

2010-02-11T12:43:00.000-08:00

All right, I think I left two questions outstanding, correct? The first one being, what was I doing in that stadium? The other one Why was I studying and taking an exam? You got to forgive me for keeping (at least some of) you in agony, but I thoroughly enjoy this little bit of power I have over you from 10 000 km distance.

So on with the answers.

To the first one the answer is plain and simple: I attended the opening of the brand new stadium in Green Point, Cape Town. You must have seen pictures of it already for it is the most picturesquely located stadium they build for the coming World Cup. The stadium is a stone throw away from the ocean, it has a view on Table Mountain from within the stadium and there is a golf course lying right next to it.
The observant and loyal readers must have remarked that it is also located in the suburb where I live. Indeed it takes me about 15 minutes on foot from my front door to the entrance of the brand new stadium. And I intend to do that several times as I have tickets to all 7 world cup games which will be held here in Cape Town. Let me emphasize: I will be attending all World Cup games held in the Green Point stadium. That includes one 16^th final, one quarter final and one semi final, and I will only have to walk there 15 minutes. Now throw in the fact that I am not a football fan, and you must have an inkling of how jealous I am making my football loving friends at this moment.

Especially to those readers, I will sing: neh neh neneeh neeh, neh neh neneeh neh.(again, referring to the last sentence of my first paragraph)

So there I was at the opening of the Green Point stadium, attending the first ever football game

held there. You know about the vuvuzelas so I won’t touch upon that again. Now try to imagine what kind of an event it would be if they open a new stadium in your home town. There would be some hustle and bustle, right? I am talking about brass bands, live performances, fire works, movie clips on the construction of the stadium, cheerleaders, sponsors left and right handing out free goodies, maybe even marines descending from the roof or fighter jets flying over in formation? None of that!! There was nothing! Ok, there was a band performing three songs and the dressed up a handful of girls like cheerleaders. And I saw two doll like figures bobbing around at the other side of the pitch, advertising something. But that was basically it. When the game started they counted down from 10 to 0, you know, for the official kick off of the first game ever! When they reached 0 they ball wasn’t even in the middle of the circle because the home team was still passing it around.

As feeble as the festivities were, so bad was the game. It was a premier league game, mind you.But the first real attempt came in the 88^th minute when a header accidentally ended up somewhere near the goal posts. The rest of the game was just an eyesore. Shame.

But I don’t wish to say negative things only. It is just easy to comment on what is bad, or what is lacking. I have to say the stadium itself is really beautiful to see. It is a very light structure and it allows you to reach the stands really easily. No crawling through dark catacombs, once you are in you walk right up to where you have to be. And there are plenty of stores to buy food or a beer.Very nice indeed.

Now on to the second question. What did I study, and what the flip was that exam about? I don’t think any one has guessed it. Although I must say that from the guesses you ventured, I got the impression I need to work on my image. No one said “lion tamer” or “snake expert” or any other cool and macho thing. One very good guess was “world cup host”. I might still want to try that.Escorting people to all 7 games in Cape Town, since I am attending them already. I told you that right? And about the finals?

I was studying and taking and exam to get my scuba diving certificate. That’s right. I am close to attaining my certificate for open water dives down to 18 metres. You have to take that stuff serious because if you mess up badly, you might end up killed. Yes sir, you can drown in 10cm of water. So if you go down to 18 metres you risk your life like 1800 cm/ 10cm = 180 times. And since I only have 1 life, that is quite significant I’d say. So that is why they make you take an exam. You have to study a book of roughly 540 pages. So with every 3 pages you learn, you eliminate 1 time you risk your life (on average).

On a serious note, the theory was quite extensive for a leisure activity, but it wasn’t that bad of course. I’m still proud to say I scored 49,5 / 50 #big smile.

(and now all you evil people are wondering what that one question was I got wrong).

I had the first dives as well. In a pool. To get to know how everything works, how to breathe, how to take off your goggles and put them back on, how to take off your tanks at put them

back on again, all that sort of stuff. Really cool, but not as cool as the first ocean dive I did.

We went down to 6 metres to a little ship wreck lying there. Nothing too dramatic but I loved it! The plants, the fish, the starfish, the little octopus we saw. I thought it was incredible. It was also a lot more difficult then I thought. I was so tired after those two hours of diving, I had to take a nap before I could go and watch the 6 nations games (rugby).

I am certain I will do this a couple of times more often. I am already dreaming of diving to real ship wrecks. There are plenty of those along the coast and they organize dives to them.

Watch this space!

Hell's horns

2010-02-04T13:12:00.000-08:00

I know I am not in the forest, and yet… there it is again. That distinct mating call. Like an moose on heat. Or a camel, but then without the bubbling sound to it. A sound that rasps your ear drum and penetrates your brain with the sole aim to annoy you into oblivion. But I am in a stadium, so it can’t really come from an animal, can it? Close, it comes from football supporters blowing on their vuvuzelas.

Before I tell you in which stadium I was and what I did there, allow me to elaborate on the nuisance called a vuvuzela.

A vuvuzela is a simplistic derivative of the well known horn. Other than it’s brother the horn, who is an established member of the classical instruments, a vuvuzela is not capable of producing any musical sound. If there had ever been attempts of including a vuvuzela in a philharmonic – or any other type of- orchestra, I am sure the player of that “instrument” got immediately banned out of the music loving society on the ground of being downright too annoying and unfit to produce a single correct note. But somehow this outcast of the world of real music instruments managed to survive. It aptly found its target audience in dumb witted football supporters and children who just love to make irritating noise on the account of being children and not knowing any better.

For sure you have at least once in your life picked up a traffic cone, put the tip to your mouth and then tried to make a trumpet (like) sound. Imagine the cone being much thinner and around a meter long with the tip nice and round, welcoming your wet lips to simply touch that cheap plastic. That would be your vuvuzela right there. Not less, and definitely not more.

Unfortunately this thing is considered harmless and is thus not prohibited in the stadiums. It is not welcomed either, by me in any case, but it is allowed in. And hundreds of people drag one along.

The vuvuzela and all its shortcomings is one thing. The use of it is an other issue worth spending a couple of words on.

Since this thing is used by football supporters and children, you can expect there isn’t really a vuvuzela etiquette. No unwritten rules govern the use of it, like you would have for breaking wind or belching. Try to grasp the far reaching consequences. You can walk around, chatting a bit, minding your own business, being harmless, while some vile passer by aims a vuvuzela straight at you and blows it out of all his might. You’ll scare the heck out of yourself.
Or you are standing in line for a nice cold beer, surrounded by vuvuzelas and their owners. The thought of them being able to blow their horns at any moment will take away your craving for a nice glass of cold, gold coloured tasty fluid. Cursed be them who take away beer cravings !

At very, very rare occasions, the vuvuzela handlers blow their horns at the same time. It is more a coincidence than a preconceived plan. But when it happens, it sounds almost nice. There is a hint of a feeling of togetherness in it. And it shows that a bunch of those things together might actually sound nice. Much to my regret, this potential remains untapped. There are no songs, no rhythms, no hymns, no nothing that those vuvuzela people do together. They just randomly make the irritating noise. It is not linked to what is going on on the pitch, it is not aimed at each other and it is certainly not to entertain the surrounding people. So why do they use it? Your guess is probably better than mine. I have no flipping idea.

Some argue it is folklore and that you should respect it for that reason. I think that holds no water. There are herdsmen in the mountains of Iceland who castrate their sheep by biting off their balls with their teeth (not the sheep’s teeth, fool. And no, they don’t castrate sheep by biting off their own balls, they bite off the ram’s balls, capice?). I am sure that is folklore too, but regretfully I don’t really feel much respect for them. You have knives to do what they do, or even forks if need be, just like you have proper instruments to make sounds that represent the beauty, power and skill of the team you support. Cheering on your team with a vuvuzela seems like wishing them the worst leg cramps imaginable. Hardly the desired effect I’d say.

What should have been an introduction to a very juicy story became a lengthy bit of ventilating frustrations. And now I have to go to sleep because it is getting late. And I didn’t get a chance to tell what I was doing in that stadium! Do you think it has something to do with the lessons and the exam I mentioned last time?

I will let you know in due time.

Night night.

From High Level Road to the Digital Highway

2010-01-27T14:08:00.000-08:00

This post comes to you from the soft and comfortable sofa in my very own lounge. Yes, a big milestone has been passed, I am surfing the web on my own laptop in my own flat. And it is wireless so I can sit, stand, lay wherever I want - laptop allowing of course. So who knows the next mail you get from me was sent out of my hot bath, or from a bench in a park, or from a sleazy public toilet. The options are limitless!! The speed of the connection isn't however. I am keeping a close eye on the stats as we speak (resp. write, read) and I am cruising at a mere 20 KB/s on average. But this connection can go all the way up to 7 MB/s, so boy oh boy if I find the right spot (if there is any) I'll surf at the speed

of light. (please don't conclude that the speed of light is 7 MB/s, that wouldn't be very accurate).

If I told you this is the only thing I realized in the past two weeks you would scold at me, right? Well you should because that would be a shame! So I am happy to tell you I did more than just this. One example would be hiking. I went hiking for a day, on my own. Grabbed a backpack and off I went. I had bought a map earlier and discovered there's actually a pathway that leads up to Signal Hill and the Lion's H

ead right around the corner. It's a bewildering feeling to be able to leave the city and be out in the nature so easily. I walked along Signal Hill, crossed it, went along the foot of Table Mountain, rounded the bend around Devil's Peak, descended at Newlands, disturbed a marriage, climbed up to Rhodes' memorial and went back home through the CBD. There, now you can use Google Earth to try to make sense of the previous description.

It was amazing to see how much wildlife I saw, considering you are right next to a city. I saw a mongoose, guinea fowl, a snake, a hawk eating a snake and a bug that killed a spider with a body the size of half my thumb. Granted, I don't have a big thumb but I was still awed by the bug that killed a spider that big.

A part of the road I walked along was closed for traffic. Landslides, falling rocks and the overall poor condition of the road didn't allow cars. Strictly speaking it was closed for hikers as well, but I ignored it. This boyish rebellion paid off because it was great fun to walk along that deserted road. I felt a bit like an Indiana Jones of some sort, not being scared of the snakes that slid away in front of my feet, looking at the mountain slope to assess which rock would fall down next. Staring hard at the rocks (camera in close up now), with eyes like slits, as if I could keep them at bay with my heroic stare. Completely in line with my character I took my shirt off. The sun was burning but that wouldn't stop me. You never see the movie heroes wielding a bottle of factor 20 sunscreen, but I did. As far as my arms would stretch I rubbed the protective cream on my skin. And I was ready to take on the rest of the road. Merrily I walked those miles, hoping I would get a nice tan in the process. I did, in a way. But the sun burns so hard here the factor 20 was hardly enough. A colleague chuckled and told me they invented factor 50 for the piercing rays of sunshine in South Africa. I failed to see the humor of it at

that point and thought of emptying a bucket of factor 50 in his nose. No, that was exaggerated, I wasn't in that much pain thanks to the lotion I did use. None the less my back and my legs look like regular kebaps. I can just peel off the skin and shove it in a roll with some veggies for an alternative meal (would that be cannibalism?).

I am looking for things to do, ways to make me leave my flat and at best meet other people. Ideally it should be something fun too, right? So one of the thing I started was taking up guitar lessons. The first real guitar lessons since I started playing. My teacher is a South African girl who goes to the university in Stellenbosch if I'm not mistaken. Haven't had enough lessons to say I made real progress but she is definitely helping me.

At work there were two events worth mentioning, I guess. An idea I put forward about having a visual management system for our team was approved. I suggested a layout and what the content should be and that got approved as well, without too many changes. I had a white board installed of 1m50 by 1m20 and now I can start implementing my ideas. It's a good feeling I can tell you.

Next to that I was also assigned my very first solo project. There will be contract negotiations in Maputo (Capital of Mozambique) early February. Cool stuff, I want to do a good job. But most I did so far was wait for data input... a whole week I had to wait for input, send reminders, find a way to reach the persons involved... very frustrating! I will have to find a way to make it happen faster next time.

For the past weekends I have been contemplating going surfing. It is absolutely something I would like to try although I have no aptitude for these things.

Any type of board that slides or has wheels gets the better of me. But the times was about to go out and try it the weather was bad or something else kept me from going. That "something else" included the newsflash you can read at the right hand side. I know this news traveled around the world because it is so spectacular.

You know, I bet dozens of people die every day from swallowing something weird (pebbles, an eraser, gummy bears, a pencil,...) but one guy dies of a shark attach and it's front page news. One could be more amazed by those items that got swallowed. (How did he swallow a whole pencil? which gummy bear did it? What brand of eraser was it?) Mainly because the shark did not do anything out of the ordinary. Unlike the pencil in the throat of a guy, the shark did what it is meant to do: swim, hunt, bite. Pencils are not designed to enter an esophagus, so you could say it is a lot more peculiar and worth more investigation. But then again, the pencil doesn't grow up to 7 meters big and it doesn't have three rows of razor sharp teeth. And when you see a pencil you don't start humming "tuuu du ---- tuuu du --- tu du tu du tu du etc..." do you?

But I'm getting side tracked here. My point is that a poor chap ended as shark chow in the bay where I wanted to learn to surf. It is very uncommon thing to happen, but kept me away for now regardless.

I'll end this post by saying that I am currently studying for something. It involves a book, a teacher and other teaching tools. I even have an exam soon... but for/of what?

I will tell you, later.

From the comfy three seater in my flat, via the digital highway to you behind your screen,

yours truly,

Capetonian ways

2010-01-14T05:55:00.000-08:00

Time to tuck away the Christmas decorations. They felt out of place either way. I didn’t get the point of putting up decorated trees and lighting window sills when we had the longest day in the South African summer. That shows how much is geared at the northern hemisphere still. But these happy habits die hard, don’t they? If it were up to certain political parties, they would have scrapped Christmas as a national holiday, because it is mainly a white man’s holiday. But too many people oppose that.

Latest developments included me getting a nice laundry machine, a power blender and a whole set of sofas. Yes, yes, I am steadily gathering all the household stuff I need. Every item adding a bit of luxury or independence. Which is good and necessary because I was getting accustomed to camping out in my own apartment, and that’s not really good is it?
Now as the saying goes, when you’re in Rome, do as the Romans do. Replace Rome with Cape Town etc… and that would mean I try to do what people do here, and in the way they do it.

One of such attempts included standing in a long traffic jam along the coastline to find a place at the beach on the 1st of January. It is something all Capetonians do. From townships and inland cities, people make their way to all the different beaches along the coast. And for the first time I felt the demographic numbers were represented correctly: I was the only white dude around. Whites are the minority in SA, with only 10% of the population. But where I have been so far, whites are by far the majority so it was nice to see it turned around for once.

Second attempt was a visit to the festival called “Tweede Nuwejaar” (second New Year). It was not very spectacular, but a good deal of fun. Seeing all the people dressed up in colorful clothes and playing catchy rhythms under the scorching sun was quite entertaining for a while.

A third step in the process of acting like the Capetonians was getting a house maid. Most people have a maid coming once or twice per week, and she does all kinds of chores. At first I didn’t want to do that. But the idea grew on me, and I’d be employing someone, right? I’d enjoy it and the lady would be helped as well. In a country with 48% unemployment and no welfare system I think that is a valid argument. Plus it sounds quite posh and it would be very comfortable, wouldn’t it? Ironing done, kitchen cleaned, that kind of stuff. So she came for the first time this week. And to prove that it is an interesting exercise in integration (as well as luxury won’t deny that) is that I’ve found out that you have to provide a meal for everyone you employ for an entire day. So next to the wage I pay I have to make sure there are sandwiches for the lady. I’ve heard South Africans telling stories about how their maid raided the fridge at every chance the got. From now on, if that occurs, I can put on a serious face and engage in the conversation with stories about "my maid" :-)

2010 came !!

2010-01-01T12:40:00.000-08:00

Happy new year !!!!

2010 has finally arrived, a magic number most South Africans have been waiting for because it will be the year of the world cup and record breaking cash flows into the country... they hope.

Has it really been 20 days since I last posted something on here? My word, I reckon some of you were wondering what was going on. Especially since I left you with such big news pending last time. Well let's see how I can sum up the past weeks.

First of all, on the job it has been quite busy. We had very intense negotiations with our previous project. Well, they seemed intense to me because it was my first time sitting in on such a high level meeting. It looked like the boss of my manager thought differently (although he woke up at 3 am that day and was in the office around 4 am which is early even to his standards because he usually starts work at 5h30). But the negotiations went well and we were complimented on the preparation we made. Actually you could say we blew the other guys out of the water with our facts. Had it not been a sellers market, we would have gotten even more I think... but I don't want to talk too much about work. Let's just say my days are quite full and I enjoy the work I'm doing.

Other big news: my friend and colleague Florens became a proud father! He is a trainee from the Netherlands who came here just like I did, as a mise grad expat. He and his lovely wife Claudia were already several months pregnant (well she technically more than him) when they arrived here. Baby Charlotte came a bit early and was accordingly small 1800 grams and 43 cm. But other than that very healthy and growing steadily. They were very pleased with the hospital which they thought was a lot better than the one in Rotterdam. If you're thinking now: really? South Africa, a developing country, good hospitals? Then I can assure you they have top class facilities here, bearing in mind the difference between private and public hospitals. Actually, a hospital in Cape Town called "de groote schuur" did the first successful heart transplant in the world. So that can be an indication. Next to that, the Netherlands have the highest baby mortality in Europe, and Rotterdam the higest in Netherland... So Claudia and Florens weren't worried to come here in that respect. Check out the pictures below, see how proud they are (yet to come if I don't forget the damn USB-stick)!!

Other big announcement to make: I have my car! Just like I predicted, I received the car shortly after my last post. It's a VW chico 1.3 liter. Not a massive machine, but very convenient and termendously popular in South Africa, especially amongst students. You see these chico golfs everywhere you go. That is a good thing because then I am quite sure I can sell it easily before I leave, and all the other benefits of garages knowing this model well, having spare parts etc... On the flipside of that, it is one of the cars that is stolen the most. Because it is well known and not very complicated in its construction, thieves know how to crack these babies easily. That is why Shafeeka (I baptised her such) has an alarm, and I'm getting a tracking device and maybe even a gear lock to keep her safely at my side, or under my bum to be more precise. She has a cd player which I thought was a must, and I'm quite sure I'll install some more powerful speakers because I need my music when road tripping !

Road tripping is what I did from the moment I had her. I added 2000 kms on the clock in under two weeks :-) I'll let the pictures of the road trips speak for themselves...

A bit more on Shafeeka. She had only 57 000 kms when I bought her, she was born in 2001 and was carefully looked after. She needs a bit of a drink to start running (i.e. sometimes I need a choke to rev her up a bit). We have not really agreed on when and how much she needs an extra drink to start running. I gave her a bit too much in the beginning, resulting in her not wantin to start anymore because she passed out drunk. But we'll sort it out.
She was the result of weeks of car hunting, weighing out upsides to downsides and fitting the tight (?) budget I imposed on myself. She lives up to all requirements and I know we will be very happy in the coming months.

An other reason for me not posting anything in the past weeks is that I had my first visitors over. Well, they didn't stay at my place, but Kimsi and Abby (two colleagues from Antwerp) came here with a couple of other friends to explore Cape Town and surroundings. So I tried to hang out with them whenever possible, which meant going to Hout Bay often (40 min drive along a ridiculously beautiful beach road, with seals on rocks in the water, beaches etc...).
I spent a couple of nice days with Abby going out to Cape Point, a game drive, Paarl, and other touristic stuff. Great fun! Miss Abby is a very good car DJ and airco handler ;-)! The conclusion of the gang was: two weeks were not enough! So bear that in mind when you come here.

That's it for now. Keep safe, enjoy the festive season, don't put on too much weight.

moving to High Level

2009-12-11T11:18:00.000-08:00

oki my peeps,

a long awaited update, I assume...
I left you, wondering if I would have the keys in time and if the moving company would come. Well, they did. Everything went according to plan, in spite of it being plan B obviously.

After a couple of calls and a fair amount of driving around in taxis, I held the keys to the flat in my hand at exactly 9h23. At 10h the movers would be there. That's about as close as it can get, isn't it? But it's the end result that counts, so I headed to my flat with a big smile on my face. The guys from the moving company were in time, which only made me feel more elated. So I joined the guys, basking in the sun, waiting for the truck to arrive with my stuff. After a while, still no container, the leader off the pack received a call. He broke lose of the pack, headed my way, holding out a phone. Was he holding is head down? The leader of the pack, showing signs of defeat? The voice on the line confirmed my feelings, something was wrong. They forgot to pick up the container.
One doesn't need to know much about container shipping to understand that having the actual container in the place it needs to be (preferably on time) is the essence of the whole thing.

I left the guys waiting for the container whilst the moving company (not Maersk you cheeky reader) rectified their mistake to pick up my things at the apartment I was happily abandoning. I even squeezed in a nap I think. And then, surely enough, the container arrived at 13h00 sharp and the movers could start working their magic. Well, "magic" is a massive overstatement because it was a simple matter of dragging heavy boxes up 3 flights of stairs. But I was the elated one, remember, and I saw all these things coming out of the cartons just the way they were stuffed in there, in Mechelen, thousands of miles up north and several weeks ago. So it was magical to me.
You have to take the part "just the way they were stuffed in there" very litterally. These mover guys in Mechelen did not ask a lot of questions, they just executed. So if I said "everything on this shelf", everything on the shelf
was put in a box and shipped. That includes a bowl of half eaten hazel nuts, a cup with -now moulded- tea, receipts from supermarkets, an envelop with 100 EUR worth of meal vouchers (maaltijdcheques),...

So now I am a resident of the Mazoli building, on 129 High Level Road, appartment 15 in 8005 Green Point (virtually the same as Sea Point actually).
Although the movers unpacked a lot of things for me (including the ridiculous number of glasses I had with me), still not everything is unpacked. Mainly because I took an unfurnished apartment and need to buy a nice cupboard still. And a table and chairs, couches and maybe something else... good thing it's the shopping period.

Now the next big thing to get in place, and actually the crux of any type of free/social life, is a car! It looks like I will have one next week. And I will tell you much more about it then. And I will also tell you about how I claimed the title of Nonkel Wouter because a little baby girl was born this week.

Please check out the pictures I uploaded on the move here

something wicked this way comes,

2009-12-02T13:14:00.000-08:00

wicked, wack, weird... tomorrow should be the big day. My stuff will be delivered to my new flat tomorrow, in sound condition I hope, and in due time... The observant reader must have noticed my reserved expression. The issue is namely that I don't hold the keys to the flat in my hand. I'll save you the details, it all comes down to HR not doing their job diligently. They work thoroughly, but slow, which resulted in them paying the warranty quite late (today). But I'm not too worried about the outcome, I'm still confident I'll be in the flat tomorrow. I will just have to run around more and make an extra effort to get things organized.

Running around and making efforts, that is exactly what I did last Saturday (after my previous post). From the list of things to achieve, I succeeded in only half of them. Much to my dismay. No, in reality "dismay" is too big a word, but it's fancy... so I'll use it anyway.
Saturday started with me running around the City Bowl (center part of CPT), looking for a scooter to rent. All scooters were rented out, not that there were that many to begin with. That resulted in me being late at the bank, finding the doors closed. I comforted myself with some exquisite sushi and headed to Voortrekker Road, a long street with a lot of car dealers. It's quite a stretch so that means a taxi driver had a good day, at the expense of, well, me... To add my frustration - by know I had used quite a lot of nasty vocabulary already- most of the flippin' car dealers were closed. No progress made, money not well spent.

Sunday was the exact opposite. A friend-colleague of mine ( we should definitely find a word for a colleague who is also more of a friend, like a friegue or colleand or just randomly "a clort" - should I start up a facebook group now?) took me out of the city. We ended up in a small village called Mamre. As road tripping will teach you, you can always expect unexpected things to happen. In this case we ended up in a brimful church, with us sticking out on the first row and as the only white people. This is the point where I should tell you that I was "dressed down". It is a little trick I do when I go out, to stand out a bit less. I wear simple clothes, no bag pack, nothing fancy that would entice thieves. Now in this case we were "just going out the city" so I dressed down extra. I had selectively chosen a T-shirt that didn't smell too much, and shorts I would wear to paint stuff. So there I went, into that packed church with everyone dressed up in suits and their best clothes. A moment of self awareness. The men were all in suit and tie, the children clean from head to toe, the women with nice necklaces and other subtle jewelry. The grandmothers all wore a scarf, over their head. Goodness me! Was this, in some strange twist of reality, a muslim church? No, it was clearly a christian church. But a scarf, really? Surely it's a sign of their backwardness then? Settled in their ways, these christians did not evolve like we and they did not become modern. Has to be! But the priest was a woman, quite a young one at that, and she made jokes in her sermon. That is very progressive, very modern, isn't it?
Leaving that aside, I was still on the first row in shorts, with incredibly pale legs lighting up the room, it seemed. Someone had pushed a book in our hands, which contained all the songs. They sang a lot. The entire mass was in Afrikaans, much to my benefit. The melodies and texts were just like the ones we have in church, so I felt very confident to squeal along "In genade, groot en ryk, bou U, Heer, u koninkryk" etc... (have a look at the building, it dates from 1818, could have been standing anywhere in Europe, right?)

After the very interesting mass, we headed out to a wine farm. Did the tasting, had an exuberant lunch and enjoyed the ubiquitous sunshine. You will understand I was very glad with this day out. Thanks very much to Georgina, my freague, colliend, clort...

Now wish me good luck for tomorrow! If all goes well, I should have an interesting series of pictures next time!

If you want to get a feel of where I will be staying, have a look at the inlay at the right. I will move to High Level Road in Sea point.

the first month

2009-11-27T13:24:00.000-08:00

We have reached the very symbolic 4-week mark, meaning I am here officially one month. And I am getting restless.
As usually the case when I get a bit restless, I can't exactly tell you why. Is it because I am not in my new apartment yet? Is it because I am still spending time browsing ads, this time for a car? Is it because so many evenings look alike? No clue. Probably a bit of everything, either way I have a faint feeling of frustration.
Fortunately I have a way to cope with that: making more plans. I like having plans, primarily because I can assure myself I will do something (slightly more) useful than just hanging around. Plans serve as a benchmark : I can compare possible other activities to the one planned and see if they are better. If the activity is deemed less interesting, based on my very subjective and arbitrary judgment, I might still do them if other factors justify that: uniqueness, involving unknown third parties, overall cost (monetary, opportunity costs, search costs,...), time or other constraints. To sum up a lot of BS: I like having plans when I feel restless.

So the plans for this weekend are (non exhaustive, not compulsory list):
- finishing the book I am reading
- finding a means of personal transport, i.e. a scooter of some sort
- leaving the city bowl for a significant amount of time
- watching the rugby game on Saturday (Bokke VS Ireland)
- go and hike in Kirstenbosch Gardens (see right inlay)
- deciding on a car
- go to bank to pick up bank card
- go and check out the switching on of the X-mas lights
- to be determined

I think it is mainly because my situation hasn't changed much in the past weeks that frustration is building up. I have found a place to rent, as I mentioned before, but I still don't hold the keys in my hand. Reason being that HR are not as efficient as I would like them to be (sharp contrast to Belgian HR). My container still isn't customs cleared. I still rely on taxis to get around in the City. I still haven't found something interesting to do on weekday evenings,... and all those things are interrelated.

But the coming week is very promising: Tuesday I should get my keys, Thursday they will deliver my stuff at my apartment, Friday there is the staff party, and there is the lottery of the World Cup groups which means there will be plenty of activity around the city. Already they are putting up extra decoration and there is a sense of excitement.
Everyone knows this will be a very important moment. News stations from around the world will take this opportunity to look at how the preparations are going. Still a lot of preparations to do in these final 200 days - the organization does not take chances on safety - let's look at the stadiums - but what about those vuvuzela's -...

a place to stay

2009-11-22T06:52:00.000-08:00

I can start this post by telling you all I have found a place to stay. I still remain a bit weary though since the paperwork is not completed yet. I will only be sure once i'm lying in my bed in that apartment.
I'm proud to say I kept my promise and I will have a nice guest room for all of you that will come over to visit Cape Town, and me. I ll give you more details on the apartment and pictures once I moved in, that should be next weekend or shortly thereafter.

The weather changed for the good. It has been warm and cloudless for the past week, and 30 C every day without fault. Luckily there is a cool ocean breaze that makes it very pleasant to walk around.

I was invited by a colleague to go and see a movie in premiere. I confess that I am a bit of a social slut these days, in the sense that I jump at every chance I get to go out and do something with someone. In this case I was also informed that there would be 8 other women. So I double jumped. And there were indeed a lot of other women: there was the mother in law, the 15 year old daughter and her friend, the sister in law... Needless to say my expectations lied in a different age category. But it was a fun night out none the less.

Yesterday I helped Nelis, a Belgian colleague who has been here for a year already, move. He lived out in one of the further suburbs and had a nice house for him, his wife and their two cats. He's now moving because his wife has found work in a suburb on the other side of Cape Town. In all fairness: the move was not a lot of work. The lion share of the work was done by the moving company who had a large truck and 6 guys to fill it.

It was a big rugby day yesterday. There were lots of games on, so I parked my butt on a chair in the Irish pub down at the Waterfront and watched all of them (Scotland won from Australia, yey!). The nice thing is that you usually can have a bit of a chat with other spectators. This time I got more than I bargained for. I ended up with four guys who work in a restaurant in an other part of Town. Nic was by far the most talkative one, Tony is from Angola and Louis and Levy are originally from Congo. It was their night out because they work 6 days a week and not on a Sunday. So they go out, talk, have a few beers and just have a good time. And that is exactly what we did.
It was great to see how easily they took me up in their group. I was very relaxed the whole time, but still on my guard. It is one of those situations where I'm sceptical because some things are happening that I (western individualist) am not used to. The thoughts that are quietly yet noticeably in the back of my mind are: Would they want me to pay for the whole bill (a popular scam in Shanghai)? Do they want to take over this table? Do they just want to pick my pockets? Do they want to find out where I live so they can come and empty my apartment? It is not something one does deliberately, and I can feel very ashamed by it if is dominating my thoughts. But nothing those guys did indicated they would want to do such things so we just had a couple of rounds together.

They filled up the hours effortlesly with their simple stories brought with too much drama and big gestures. What was an epiphany to me was that they were quite demanding to the staff. I don't like asking waiters for too much, I even have difficulties sending back cold soup, but they were asking a whole lot of things. Nic wanted to change his glass because he was given a low glass with a handle, like a german beer glass. "That spoils my evening! It is not a manly glass. I need a tall glass, bruh. This is a glass for coffee!" Tony wanted to change channels on the TV and asked about 5 waiters to do that... and on and on. So here you had guys, waiters themselves, demanding a lot. And I started to realize that I feel akward whenever a waiter is serving me. Usually, halfway through your meal, the waiter comes to ask if everything is ok. I just nod or say "yes yes" so convincingly that it is probably clear that I don't want him to be bothered by what I want. Is it because I am afraid a master - servant relationship would occur?
I had a cold lasagna the other day but still told the waitress everything was perfect, and here you had Nic asking for a vuvuzela (the horn that makes a lot of noise) or the waitresses' number in exchange for his money... So I figured I will have to ease up and be more relaxed when waiters are around.

Louis is the only one not working at the restaurant and would best be described as the uptight guy that wants to come across as the intelligent type. He craves attention and goes to look for a new "audience" whenever he is not part of the conversation. To illustrate: he started dancing in front of the musicians at the Waterfront, where around a hundred tourists were gathered to look at the street musicians. Then he continued to take over one of the xylophones after he had asked a 60+ old women to dance with him.
When we were introduced and he found out that I am Belgian, he started talking about the relation between Belgium and Congo. A topic that unsettles me slightly as I don't really know what to say or do (see right hand side why). He called me his uncle and he was my nephew. And he tried to drag me in a discussion about why the Congolese were never given Belgian nationality although they were part of the Belgian kingdom. And that Belgium should be more involved in Congo just like the UK, US and China are doing good business. I guess I should make the suggestion to Karel De Gucht to start up the dialogue (?) with Congo again.

First Post

2009-11-16T11:46:00.000-08:00

hello All,

sorry to keep have kept you waiting for this blog. Hope you can understand I had quite a few things on my mind and it is not easy finding a decent internet connection. I am at the office now and still struggling a bit.

Quite a few things happened in the past 14 days.
First of all, I had a great send off by friends and family. In the past weeks I have had to say many good byes, which was weird because it still feels like I won't be away that long... but that might still come. Either way I am very glad to have seen almost all of you before I left.
I had a good flight. Even the baby - because there is always at least 1 baby on a long distance flight - kept its (cute little) mouth. Upon arrival I found my luggage immediately, and had a driver waiting for me at the exit. To top all things off, I was brought to a very nice hotel. Perfect ride, almost. At the hotel they didn't know I was coming. But a cup of coffee and a few calls later that was sorted as well.

The first week at the office was quite busy from the very beginning. Of course there is the pile of paperwork to wrestle through (insurance, bank account...), a househunt to start and next to that I had to immediately join high level meetings with the top guys about a big contract that will be negotiated soon. A dive in deep water, but an interesting one at that. I wouldn't have wanted it otherwise.

The first Friday night is easy to sum up: farewell drink for a MISE colleague leaving to Dubai and watching a rugby game in a bar. I'll leave it up to you to estimate how many beers that took. Saturday was dedicated to house hunting, Sunday was the day of the Big Walk. The Big Walk is an annual event where thousands of people walk 10-20-40 or 80 kms on one day to raise funds for charity. It all ends with a festival like happening. It was a lot of fun even though it rained quite a lot.

The second week was filled with visiting apartments, work and looking for a car. I would have liked to be able to say that concludes the search, but alas.

Last weekend I joined a couple of colleagues at their house to have a braai and watch the Bokke play France. The braai was a result of 8 men going grocery shopping: too much meat, a few rolls and a small bag of lettuce that was left unopened till the end. It must have been the thought that counted. The same goes for the national anthem sung by a rastafari at the beginning of the game. It was a complete embarassment. The guy sounded like he had sworn never to sing one note right, and was very enthousiastic about it. He squeeled for the entire stadium and thousands of viewers on television, inducing the rage of the Bokke fans (look on youtube). Fortunately for the organising country, he was assigned by the SA embassy. I think he better stays in France for a while.