South Africa Month 3-(Plus Moseyin’in Mozambique and Swingin’in Swaziland)

In this episode I:
-Have a run in with an ostrich and a crocodile in Swaziland
-Get electrocuted in Mozambique
-Reflect on life
Wow, I can’t believe I’m already over halfway through my internship. It seems like it just started. It seems like it started just yesterday. I’m still a bit groggy from recent travels, so I’ll try not to be too wordsy as per usual.
By now I’ve passed the newbie threshold and can reflect on South African life. How does it compare to life in Canada? Well in many ways it’s pretty much the same. People go to work, go to movies (although they seem to come out 3 months later, have assigned very comfy seating, and butter on your popcorn is unheard of so I hope you like salt). That assigned seating thing really threw me loop, especially as I tend to go to movies no one else wants to see (such as Tomorrow After the War Began the Australian equivalent to Red Dawn), which means I have the theatre to myself anyway (good times). But I digress...
While South African has something like 12 official languages, so in addition to Afrikaans, there are a number of prominent native African languages like Zulu, Xhosa (the language Mandela spoke), Sotho, Swati, etc., but English is also one of them, so if you speak English you can usually understand and be understood (to some extent, accents are thicker than molasses, especially if the person you’re speaking to, first language is a native African one). This means that words like “burger”can sometimes be pronounced more like “bay-ga” meaning your “cheese bay ga” might not actually be a cheese bagel. There’s also a healthy dose of South African slang or alternative terms, such as:
Translator
CANADIAN SOUTH AFRICAN
Trunk of a car Boot of a car
Gas Petro
Barbeque Braai
Sausage Wors (pronounced Vors)
Beef Jerky Biltong
Vegetable Chicken
Soccer Football
Football That game you American pussies play where they wear helmets
Rugby A MAN’S GAME!!
Buddy China
Metis Coloured
To Graduate To Matriculate (just sounds wrong)
Traffic Light Robot
Robot Traffic Light
That last one really threw me for a loop when I first arrived here and would see writing on the road saying “ROBOT AHEAD” and having arrows pointing. Naturally, after a life of being taught that robots are mechanical men who may or may not be trying to destroy all humanity (or at least take our jobs). It took me a good 2 months to figure out they were referring to traffic lights, much to the delight of the local South Africans who would say “Come on man, how could we have robots here? This is Africa, not [North] America.” As if Robots are an everyday occurrence back home.
Of course, I generally get confused for American when I speak (when I don’t speak, I’m Afrikaans). Occasionally someone will guess correctly that I’m Canadian from time to time, claiming they recognize the “softness” of the Canadian accent; or possibly a t-shirt I’m wearing that has a reference to Winnipeg on it (incidentally, I was very surprised to see Winnipeg Director Guy Maddin’s My Winnipeg, or “Moj Winnipeg” as it apparently is in Afrikaans, featured prominently on the wall of classics at a local indie theatre, alongside the likes of Gone with the Wind and Alfred Hitchcock. I can only imagine what South African audiences made of the film, if you’ve seen it, or any other Guy Maddin stuff, you might as well). Often a new usually Caucasoid South African I meet, with their often sarcastic confrontational sense of humour, will make some crack about Americans upon meeting me, obvious trying to illicit some sort of response. As someone who has often mocked Americans in the past himself, though, I tend not to know how to respond to this (should I defend them?), so we usually just stare awkwardly at each other, until someone asks “What part of the States are you from?”I and respond “Canada.” Usually this results in the asker going “Ah f*ck, I knew it,” when clearly they did not, and the evening proceeds onwards from there. Sometimes the questions about “America” continue, as clearly the equation between Canadians and Americans is firmly entrenched, and a series of questions about “What’s the Grand Canyon like?” and “What do you think of your president?” ensue. Some even don’t realize we’re a separate country, and are mind-boggled to learn that we not only don’t have a president, we, in fact, still have a queen. Of course, many North Americans, both Canadian and American, still think Africa’s a country anyway (if they ask you what the capital of Africa is, say Istanbul). So fair’s fair, I suppose. Besides, if someone confuses me for an American, they usually apologize, and if they choose to mock me, I treat them like Australians.
So what did I do this month in Johannesburg? Saw a movie called Joburg: Unhinged at the aforementioned Indie theatre (Joburg Unhinged: A locally made doc about life and stereotypes about life in Joburg. Clearly a first film, but a well done one that took years to make. Met the director there). There seems to be a fairly viable film industry here, as I’ve also met the former director of Kung Fu: The Legend Continues at a braai (see above language guide) who was nostalgic about his time shooting the ‘90s tv series in Toronto (he talked at length about “David Carradine” who he referred to as a perpetual drunk who often slept in the trunk of his car. Carradine, of Kill Bill fame, died a couple years back in a hotel in Bangkok with a couple of hookers, which according to his former director “wasn’t all that unexpected.”)
Anywho, uh, I also went to a Sikh New Year’s festival (South Africa apparently has the most Indian outside of India), which involved a lot of traditional Bhangra dancing, and in the “modern traditional” sense, one far too young girl who does far too much booty shaking. The food was good. I tried “Bunny Chow” which is a South African specialty, consisting of a curry (usually mutton) in a carved out of ¼ of a loaf of bread. Its delicious, but you’re supposed to eat it with your hands, which when you’re dealing with messy curry can never end well.
Speaking of South African food, have I mentioned braais, borewors, biltong, and various other meat heavy dishes (have pity for the South African vegetarian). To the outside tongue, these might just seem like barbeques, sausages, and fatty meats (even skim milk is hard to find), but don’t tell that to the South Africans. South Africans love their braais like Canadians love their hockey, passionately to an absurd degree. Of course the South Africans also love their sports, especially cricket, rugby, and football (see translator). I saw a rugby match a couple weeks ago, basically a more chaotic version of our football with a bizarre point system that I didn’t quite understand, but one team eventually won and the security guard informed me that the game was over.
If rugby seems perpelexing, cricket is ten times worse. While its similar to a game called Can Can I played as a kid (where two players with baseball bats in holes dug out of the ground would stand in front of large tin cans, while a pitcher bowled a ball towards one who would try to hit it and score as many runs back and forth between the holes before a can got knocked over), Cricket still puzzles me to a great extent. My host family are cricket fanatics, and generally don’t understand how you cannot recognize the superiority of cricket over all other sports because short games can last entire days (yay!) while traditional games can run for a week, and people will pack food to last the entire game. This justification for this bizarre behaviour will go on for a while before finally ending with the highly debatable declaration “...and that’s why cricket is so exciting.”
But enough about South Africa (until I come back to it). On to Mozambique
MOZAMBIQUE
Not far from high-altitude is the seaside tropical parad-eh, uh place called Maputo, the Mozambican capital. A former Portuguese colony, with a more latin feel and higher level of poverty, Mozambique is South Africa’s Mexico, only its much closer (and it speaks Portuguese, which is not Spanish, despite my best attempts). While malaria isn’t much of a risk in most parts of South Africa, it’s a major issue in Mozambique, whose mosquitoes apparently carry the worst form of it (fantastic!). I was told by both my travel nurse and a veteran backpacker I know in Johannesburg that I could get malaria preventative meds from any pharmacy without a prescription, I didn’t bother getting one, only to find on Good Friday, a day before I left and when all the clinics were closed, that they wouldn’t give me any malaria medication (which I think is a bit silly considering all I literally would have had to do is go to a doctor and say “I’m going to Mozambique” to get one). As luck would have it, I met a Dutch couple on the ferry to an offshore island, Inhaca (pronounced, Inyaca), who happened to be doctors working in rural South Africa, who helped me get some meds. So far, I’ve shown no symptoms (and am probably now in the clear), but I had a few nervous nights where I was layering the bug spray on like skin cream and crawling into the fetal position under mosquito nets and hard-blowing fans.
Speaking of fans, my effort to have more fans in my dorm room (which served the double function of blowing away mosquitoes and keeping down the heat and humidity) resulted in me finding a couple of discarded large metal fans under a counter in my hostel. Anxious to have more fans (and seeing that no one seemed to have used these in a while), I brought’em out and tried to get them going (never thinking that there might be perfectly valid reason why there were hidden and disused in the first place). The first one had no one plug, or I should the plug was ripped off entire, so it could not be used (that should have clued me in, but of course it didn’t).
So I turned to the other fan, which had a plug, which I plugged in. The fan immediately started up, and I got a nasty shock. Now, I thought that was odd, but initially dismissed it as a static shock (despite the fact that I was standing on lineoleum over cement and not carpet). The fan was working, but heard some crackling, and was beginning to think there was some sparks going between the metal of the fans. I know suspected there was an electrical leakage, but for some reason, I thought it would be a good idea to test this by touching the fan. Don’t do this at home.
The fan immediately came a large electrical shock, which cause my hand to jerk back, luckily away from the fan. I had just been electrocuted, gaining a more personal experience with Mozambican voltage than I was hoping for, but thankfully the only shock damage was psychological.
The danger wasn’t over though. I couldn’t just leave the giant fan like that, leaking electricity all over the place. It could electrocute someone else or start a fire or something. I had to unplug the fan. Only problem was the fan was so big it blocked the plug, and sizzled with electricity, eager to shock me again. I gave it as much distance as I could as I snuck my hand around, grabbed the plug, and pulled it out. The fan stopped sparking, and shut itself down, defeated. I laughed at about my brush with death by idiocy (earlier I had been bemoaning the fact that nothing interesting had happened yet that I could write about in my blog).
All in all, mostly due to the malaria scare but a limited time frame as well, I didn’t have that much time in Mozambique only couple of days. But it was enough to get out to an offshore island and popular haunt among South Africans, Inhaca, although the boat ride there took 2 hours both ways and we only had four hours on the island itself, which wasn’t much time, especially when where we ate lunch was on Mozambican time (in other words it took us an hour and a half to get food, which consisted of a chorizo sausage between two slices of bread). The sea ride over was one of the roughest I’ve encountered, as the boat, not too smally, was tossed up and down and side to side by the big choppy waves of the Indian Ocean. While I didn’t get seasick, thank God, I did develop a sudden interest in Mozambican naval safety standards.
Back on dry land, I spent most of my final day in Maputo exploring the city itself. Marveling at the streets, all named after communist leaders (Mozambique was firmly in the socialist camp during the Cold War) like Lenin, Mao, Che Guevara, etc. and now ironically are the main avenues of capitalism in the country (just check the Coca-cola ads at the corner of Karl Marx and Ho Chi Minh). I much preferred exploring the city in daylight, as opposed to the night when my bus initially dropped me off in the middle of nowhere. I had planned to take a taxi, but when the taxis near where the bus stopped were said to be unsafe, I ended up waundering the city (trying to walk towards my hostel), hoping I would find something more savoury, but things got less savoury (its best not to walk around African cities at night on your own, especially with a pile of bags). Thankfully, a local Samaritan saw me and gave me a free ride the rest of the way (and thankfully he was an honest bloke).
Other sights and activities worth mentioning include the Nucleo de Arte (Art Nucleus) where they had a stunning collection of sculptures made out of the remains of AK-47s (while now at peace, civil war plagued the country for over 20 years with the AK-47 at one time being so common its even featured on the Mozambican flag). I also tried a Mozambican meal at a bizarre restaurant hidden deep in an almost abandoned (but still lit up) run down amusement park (think the Brandon Fair if they let it sit there for a while). The food itself, matapas, was basically a mixture of cassava, beans, and other vegetables mixed together and spread over rice. It’s something of an acquired taste.
Getting out of Mozambique to Swaziland without a car meant I had to go by Minibus, which I had used in Joburg sparingly, but had never used to travel between cities. While this is certainly a cheaper option than most, it has some major drawbacks. For one, you’re supposed to be at the bus rank generally by 6 am, which for a night hawk like me is a murderous time to get up. There is no scheduled time for departure, the bus only leaves “when full” so you might be waiting 20 minutes, or you might wait for 4 hours (my bus was more of the 4 hours variety). During this time some random guy with no badge or uniform will grumpily take your passport and disappear without explanation. As you wait an unknown amount of time for your bus to leave, you either be forced to sit in the sweaty stuff minibus or stand out in the hot Mozambican sun (if you leave the bus, it may go without you). Regardless of which place you choose, aggressive hawkers will try to sell you all manner of junkfood and various cellphone plugs (are these things really in high demand, the cell phone plugs I mean?). It’s chaos, its madness, it’s Africa.
When the minibus does finally leave (and somehow your passport has found its way back to you), you can expect to be nice and cozy with the seat next to you on either side (the best you can hope for is that its a pretty girl and not some big momma). Either way it’ll be cramped as the driver tries to jam in as many people as they can. Then there’s always the threat of break downs, border holdups, or vehicular catastrophe (which you when consider the state of these vehicles and the state of their drivers, isn’t that far off a possibility). Most of the drivers are pretty kooky to say the least, swerving from lane to lane, honking and yelling at people on the street that they want to pickup, all while blaring Jesus Gospel music as of on a campaign to convert their passengers. It’s an experience to say the least, but it will get you to Swaziland... eventually
SWAZILAND
My arrival in Swaziland did not go auspiciously unfortunately. The minibus frustrations continued at the border where we were stopped inexplicably a few times. To pass the time, I thought I would take a few photos of the scenery, but this illicited a sudden and hostile response from one of the Swazi border guards who thought her tent was in one of my shots. She stormed at me, asking who had asked me to take a picture of her tent, why would I take a picture here, etc. Etc. The tent, which I never actually took a picture of, was just a square canvas jalopy. Nothing special, I couldn’t even tell she was in it when I first looked. Not sure what the security risk was (although there were rumours of a popular uprising against the Swazi absolute monarchy that month, although this apparently did not materialize). Even if the uprising did occur, i’m not sure how a picture of a tent in the middle of nowhere would serve the cause. My guess is she just wanted a bribe. She threatened to confiscate my camera until I proved that I did not have a shot of her stupid tent by going through all my photos. She eventually lost interest before I got through them all, and I was allowed back on the bus. Welcome to Swaziland.
We continued on to Manzini, Swaziland’s most major city (the country is very rural) and a hectic Minibus turn around, where I had to catch a different minibus amidst the chaos and find my way to the hostel, or as close I could get to it. As I had my bags with me, the guy charged for 2 extra seats, which I thought was fair, but then he decided he would also charge for a 3rd seat, even though I was only using two, just because I was big. I argued with him over this obvious rip off, but eventually conceded as at this point I just wanted to get to the hostel. We eventually sorta of got in the area, with the bus stopping and honking at each person it saw along the way. As I was in the back, and people didn’t seem to eager to move out of my way, I ended up crawling out the back.
That’s when disaster struck. I managed to get my big bag out of the minibus, but it took with my knapsack (including my laptop and iPod other valuables) still on it. I let out a yell that was heard across Swaziland.
Here was my situation. I was stranded in a foreign country on little sleep with no knowledge of who my bus driver (all the minibuses looked pretty much the same, white vans with no corporate logos or uniforms or anything and I had no idea where the minibus was going). And I also couldn’t speak the local language. I was certain that all was lost, but I figured, unlikely, as it was, I would try to track down the minibus that ran with my bag. A nearby Swazi teenager offered to help me find the bag, and we got a nearby taxi driver (although it took a lot of convincing, and them arguing in Swazi, before we moved) in hopes that we could catch the minibus before it went to its next logical stop. This didn’t work though as all the minibus taxis looked the same, so we went to a stop they all went by and hoped the driver would stop there and recognize us. He didn’t, but another driver who had seen me in Manzini (I stood out as the only white guy riding minibuses) luckily knew the guy whose minibus I had boarded, and he called him on a cell, and we agreed to meet at the Manzini turnabout and he would give my bag back to me, for 200 Swazi Emalgenis (basically $30). I wanted to take the taxi right there, but the other driver still wanted to do his route, so we slowly meandered our way back to Manzini, picking up and unloading passengers all along the way, and when we finally got to Manzini and my helpers (who had now grown in number) all bolted from the vehicle inexplicably (they tended not to explain anything that was happening, so I was pretty anxious the whole time). Apparently, my original driver had just driven past them and had gone back on his route with my bag! This time I insisted we chase after him in a regular taxi (ie one that wouldn’t stop constantly and pick people up), and we did, except it decided impromptly to veer off his route, and no one told me of course, and my desperation grew). Eventually they came to a cutoff point, where my original driver would eventually drive past, but I was getting increasingly nervous. FINALLY, my original driver pulled up, I paid him his “holding fee,” and I took the bag back (everything was still inside it). I ended up paying $200 in total with taxi chases and rewards to my entourage, but it was cheaper than trying to replace my computer (although one guy turned into something of a stalker and became angry with me when I said I couldn’t pay for a flight to Canada for him, so that was a bit uncomfortable). Nevertheless, I successfully got my bag back against the odds, and it could have been a helluva lot worse. Very lucky. Although I’ll probably give minibuses a pass from now on.
The next day was fairly low-key by comparison. My backpack firmly locked in the hostel safe, I headed out to the nearby Milwane game reserve, which most people visit in a car, but I didn’t have one, so I just walked around it. This was my first foray into an African wild space, and a decidedly tame one (there were supposed to be no predators for example). The game reserve was in the Lobamba area of Swaziland near the Ezulwini Valley where I was staying. This was the area the king lived, who unlike the Queen of Britain and Canada, rules absolutely (there is a parliament but it just does what he tells it to do). While the Swazis are proud of their culture and history, the king is starting to make some serious enemies, spending national money on lavish palaces for himself and his family (he has many many wives) while the average Swazi is mired in poverty in one of the most HIV-ridden countries in the world. When people rumbled about their misgivings a couple weeks before my visit (there was talk of revolt), the revolt was put down and the king apparently said “the people need to complain less and sacrifice more” completely unaware of the complete hypocrisy of that statement. Frankly I think that’s worse than “let them eat cake.”
At any rate, back to the game reserve, I was walking around and I quickly saw some zebras mixed with horses (which supports the ridiculous theory that zebras are white horses painting with stripes to attract visitors ) and some funky looking goats. Naturally I was taking lots of photos, when I came across what looked like a heap of junk flapping about in the wind. Confused as to what I was looking at, I stopped and made out a rather large bird neck and head amongst the flapping junk. That’s when I realized, this was an ostrich.
So now I knew what it was, what it was doing was an entirely differently question. It appeared to be flapping around and swinging its head it some form of bizarre dance , although it was sitting on the ground. I’m sure this served some evolutionary function.
I began recording its odd behaviour with my camera and after I got enough footage, I stopped and began to walk way at which point the ostrich stopped, stood up, and glared at me. This bird was huge, taller and bigger than me by a long shot. I glared back and took another picture of it standing up. It began to flap and threatened to jump the fence and mess me up. I remembered a nightmare I had as a kid of a giant ostrich-like bird chasing after me and trying to peck my brains out as I hid behind fences, and decided it wise to slowly back away. After I put enough distance between me and the ostrich, it went back to its ground flapping nonsense.
A group of park maintenance workers apparently saw the whole thing and were presently their heads off. Apparently the ostrich, which was male, had mistaken me for another male ostrich and thought I was a sexy threat to its harem, not that I could see any other ostriches around or would really be interested anyway, but I guess that didn’t matter. The workers told me.
“He want to kick you. He almost kick you.”
Apparently ostriches kick things they don’t like. (later on, halfway through my hike I would finally reach the visitors centre, its in an odd place, where they had far too late warnings not to mess with ostriches)
I decided to continue on my hike less the Ostrich decide to give chase after all, but an African bull with the largest horns I have ever seen on a cow was busy munching grass right near the gate I had to pass through. Fighting with ostriches was one thing, but this bull could destroy me with a single charge if so chose. The workers assured me it was docile and wouldn’t bother me, but I tip-toed around it all the same, giving the most space I could.
Finally I got to the visitors centre and stopped for lunch (the visitors centre is oddly located deep within the park, which means you need a map to get to the place that has the maps, which makes no sense, but this is Africa, so they will also charge you R10 for it). The place was full of springbok, gazelles, and other deer-like creatures who liked hiding behind trees just out of shot and then jumping when I got too close. I had some food in the game lodge-like surrounds, enjoying the break from the heat, before decided to walk back. I didn’t want to go back the way I cam lest I run into that damn ostrich again, I looked at the free map on the wall that said I should be able to get back to the park entrance if I followed the path that ran beside the river.
That was safe right? I asked one of the staff. (I was worried about hippos, who, despite being herbivores are the most dangerous animals in Africa. Hungry, hungry hippos is not a game to them). He said I should be fine. “I haven’t seen any hippos or crocodiles today.”
Wait, what was that about crocodiles? I thought this park was supposed to be non-predator.
He said it was, or at least no mammalian predators. They had crocs of course.
Great.
So I’m walking down this path by the river, eyeing every floating stick nervously as I pass to see if there’s a croc or hippo lurking underneath. I never thought to check on land.
But then I saw a strange greenish brown shape covered in large scales poking out of one of the bushes on the other side of the pond, it gradually became bigger until I saw the outline of a 10 foot long giant dinosaur-like lizard.
Yeah there were crocodiles here all right.
Thank God, this one was sleeping and didn’t notice—or seem to care about— a lonely mammal walking by. Once again, I walked away slowly but hurriedly, anxious to get out the park now before I ended up chomped, bored, or pecked. As usual the distance was much longer than they made it out to be and I ended up hitching a ride with an Aussie couple who ended up driving me all the way back to my hostel (as they wanted to go to the craft sale across the street) so that worked out well. (the hostel staff, an American girl and her Afrikaans partner, told me I could hike to both places, but that would have been quite the undertaking in the Swazi sun. Then again they also refused to give me a straight answer about the minibuses, so they perhaps just didn’t like me all that much.)
Other than that, I also visited a Swazi cultural visit where they explained traditional village life and performed traditional dances, followed by a hike to nice waterfall.
DURBAN
I spent the rest of my Easter break in Durban (I was considering going back by Lesotho but the road is apparently only passeable by 4X4 so that idea got nixed. Oh well, I’m sure I’ll make it to Lesotho at some point, perhaps in time for ski season).
Durban is the capital of KwaZulu Natal where the Zulu homeland also is, so there’re many Zulu folks and Zulu hanging around. It’s also said to have the most Indians outside of India, so I was bit expecting a mini-Mumbai, but no dice, Durban’s still very much a South African town. They do have an Indian market where hawkers will pester you at every corner to make you feel like you’re in India, but it lacked the crowds. Still they had some nice artwork, carvings, and I was particularly impressed by the ornately painted ostrich eggs (but I knew, despite the store keeps enthusiasm, there was no way I was getting that home in one piece in a backpack). Another symbol of the Indian cultural presence here is the local delicacy, bunny chow, a fantastic dish consisting of curried mutton (although I usually ordered the chicken) stuffed inside a hollowed out bowl of a loaf of bread, which you use to eat the curry. Delicious!
Durban’s main tourist highlight, however, has to be its gorgeous network of beaches (basically one extremely long and sandy beach that they’ve separated into various names). Under apartheid, this was would be the notorious beach where whites and non-whites were kept separate, though these days its only surfers and swimmers that are segregated.
It being a holiday weekend most everything was closed, so I didn’t really get to see the museums and art galleries that Durban also is famous for, so I ended up spending most of my time poking around the beach. I tried to go surfing, but the wind conditions were too blustery for beginners they said, so I stuck to body surfing which was easier on my budget anyway. I spent a bit of time exploring Durban’s delightfully tacky seaside attractions as well, including an aquarium restaurant with a built in shark tank, a gondola that goes and up then back down for no apparent reason, and an old decrepit arcade in a cement basement of a run-down amusement park where half the games aren’t working and none of them are new; just the way I like it.