Out of Africa

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India is a country that captivates and transports you through time and space. It’s like no other place we’ve found. And so writing this just two weeks after we left Jo‘burg, it seems like our Africa adventure was a lifetime ago! However, we must record the fun time we had just before we flew out on SAA.

Our final two evenings were spent in great company. Femada & Seema had arranged for us all to go out for dinner with Margie and Samuel (he heads up TAFTA’s admin team - fundraising is a key part of his role). We went to an Indian buffet restaurant at Suncoast Casino; a tasty “appetiser” for our next leg. It was great to get a chance to meet Margie again and in more social circumstances and thank her for all that had been arranged for us. She also gave us greater insights into why John Dunn is so revered in KZN; apparently he had great wealth, engineering skills which were valued, and learnt to speak Zulu (which not many whites do even today). By marrying so many Zulu women he was considered to have integrated into local society. We still think he was a randy old sod!
We hope to meet up with Margie and Samuel when they next visit England - and hopefully we can put them in touch with UK organisations that might support their work.

Next day we took the greyhound to Jo’burg again - revisiting much of our route to the Northern Drakensbergs. This time we stayed at the Backpackers Ritz in the Rosebank area, and met Gift and Toni there from ATCo. They’d just finished another overland trip.

It was great to catch up with Mandie again. She took us to Moyo (which means soul or spirit in Khosa), an African restaurant in the Melrose Avenue area. Sitting outside, they provide blankets to wrap around you in case it gets cool and light braziers around the seating area. We had our faces painted and had yummy marrowbone flambéed in brandy followed by oxtail stew and springbok shanks. Then she whizzed us off to Monte casino (modelled on a Tuscan street scene) for Italian ice cream for pudding. It was good to see a different side to Jo’burg life - café culture. Seeing the bustling evening scene somewhat restored our view of SA, & Jo’burg in particular given that the crime issue is on the back of everyone’s mind constantly. As Margie put it people are traumatised but cope regardless.

Given the political divisions within the ANC between Jacob Zuma - charged with corruption etc (but who has wide popular support as a Zulu within the rural majority but lacks credibility with the middle class black & white folk) & the president Tabo Embeki, SA is in for an interesting time both internally & externally.

And finally, the 27th January, two and a half months after our adventure started we leave Jo’burg for Mumbai.

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