Totsiens Pretoria, Hello Cape Town

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It has been quite a while since I made it to a computer to sit and blog so I guess we have a lot of catching up to do. After the safari in Kruger, I got back to the hospital for my last week. I haven't really described my experience at the hospital too much yet. Basically, if you flew over the hospital in a jet going really fast and all you saw was a giant blur, you might mistake it for an American hospital. If, however, you were to step inside it and walk the hallways for a few minutes you start seeing the differences pile up. First of all, South Africa has a huge AIDS problem compounded by an equally daunting Tuberculosis issue. So of the patients on the ward, AIDS will be a complicating factor if not the immediate problem for a large percentage. This makes for very difficult patients and their treatment is rarely straightforward. Another thing that jumps out at you are the lines. The line to check in snakes around the entrance to the hospital like an anaconda. Most of the patients are black but mixed in with them is a good number of elderly whites (almost always Afrikaans speaking). Once they meander through the checkin line, they then must wait in line at the clinics. People are sprawled out in the hallway like they live there. And once you finally get to see the doctor it's time to get that prescription filled. You guessed it. Another insanely long line. So by the time the process is complete the patient most likely will have spent a greater part of the day up at the institution. This is how the Academic hospital is here. I have been told that the private hospitals run much more efficiently. I have to admit, though, that I loved going in to the hospital in the morning. The attending physicians were really amazing teachers. They took a lot of time to explain issues, discuss the latest research, and teach a great physical exam.
This was also the time to start saying goodbyes to the friends we had made in South Africa. On Tuesday we went out with several of the medical students from Pretoria. They introduced us to a little thing I like to call POISON. They called it Stroh Rum and it is apparently some sort of moonshine from the dark continent. Basically it was like drinking lighter fluid and then striking a match so that fire ran down the esophagus into the stomach and then to nether regions. Several people left early in a taxi, but some of us stayed longer and were taken home by a Nardus and Twoinette. And thus we were also introduced to a aptly named treat called, Chicken Surprise. Tif and Sam were complaining that there was no Taco Bell here, so that after you have been drinking there isn't anywhere to get a little munchy on the way home. Enter Chicken Surprise. The first clue should have been that it is sold at the gas station underneath one of those heat lamps for hatching eggs or keeping week old burritos warm at the seven eleven. The second clue should have been the smell which was like sour kraut and chicken feed. The third clue should have been the filling which was stringy chicken weiner, some paste that resembled baby diarrhea, and cabbage all wrapped up in a fry bread. But Nardus and Twoinette swore that it was just delicious and would really hit the spot, so I ate about half of one, as did Tif (Sam only had a few bites and Clay didn't touch his altogether which should have been the 4th clue). That was the last thing I ate for about 36 hours, part of which I was bed-ridden, part of which I was nauseated and the rest of the time I was most likely on the toilet. My only consolation was that I had company, Tif and later Clay actually got sick as well. I had joked that the Safari was like fat camp cuz we got up at 530am and then ate "breakfast" at about 1230pm followed by dinner at 8pm, but this paled in comparison to the weight loss potential of the Chicken Surprise. On Thursday we went out to the "campus corner" hangout where all the college kids go to get a little crazy. We ended the night at the local dance club, The Drop Zone. They played songs like American Pie, Black and White, Ghostbusters, and even some disco type stuff along with the standard Black Eyed Peas and Outkast fare. We had one last farewell dinner with Renee's family, I made Chicken tacos which is like a delicacy here as tortillas and taco shells cost about 7 dollars for 10.
Then Jake, Jayson, and I headed off for one last safari in the Pilanesberg Park. This was a smaller national park but it was only a 2 hour drive from Pretoria so we headed off in search of rhino. We had not seen rhino on the first safari but after several hours at the Pilanesberg we spotted a mother and baby so tiny he didn't even have his horns yet. We spotted 2 more mother baby pairs before the day was over. It was fun to just take a car out there and travel the dusty park roads on our own. Jayson even got out of the car once to stomp down some grass that was getting in his way of a rhino shot. We also went to Johannesburg in the car. This was quite an ordeal because Jo-burg is known for its disorganized roads and extremely high crime/hijacking rate. More importantly, they drive on the right side of the road here and the I had to shift with my left hand as well. So maybe I almost killed us a couple of times, but we did make it to the apartheid museum, Soweto (a black township where Nelson Mandela is from), and a rugby game without an accident. The apartheid museum was very interesting. My favorite parts where the display of the giant hummer like vehicles that the police used to drive through the townships with to "keep order" (inside the vehicle were several televisions showing footage taken from the same vehicles during the tense years of the 70s and 80s) and I also was intrigued by the footage they had of the Opening of the Voortrekker Monument. There was a huge movement within the Afrikaans community to relive the glory of the Great Trek, so these people all dressed in bonnets and settler type garb and crowded onto the hill where the Voortrekker Monument still stands.
Soweto was not the greatest experience for me. We had paid to have a guide take us through the township on a tour. His name was Jabu, although Jabba might have fit him better. He was friendly enough, but he would not stop talking for two seconds straight. We piled into his little red bmw and he first drove us to the market which certainly left an impression. At the market, which was basically a dusty, filthy, litter-strewn patch of heaven, people were selling everything from used boots to produce from the grocery store (at several times the price one would find at the supermarket). And then there was the butchery, taking place right on the ground with more flies buzzing around than you could shake a stick at. One particular stand was taking the cow head off the dirt and using a beat up metal frame from some vehicle to chop off brain fat and facial muscles and then throw them into a bloody pile (This will come into play later on.) Then we went to the rich part of Soweto, where those that have used the masses of impoverished have built their heavily fenced and guarded mansions. These would be people like the director of the national black choir, politicians who have filled their pockets with taxpayer's money, and the occasional soccer star. We also went to the poor shantytowns (they prefer the term "informal settlements"). This is somewhat like the set of Tsotsi, if you have seen that movie, but less romantic than the movie makes it. Two hundred people are forced to share a single water faucet, and the only toilets are port-a-potties that are spread out about 1 per 10 houses. There was a new BMW parked in the middle of this depravity even, though. It was owned by the guy that ran the store where goods were sold for astronomically higher prices than we paid in the grocery stores of the white suburbs. But when you have a captive audience, like these people without any mode of transportation are, you can jack up the price. We went to a Shebeen in the shantytown. This is a fancy name for a dive. Picture the sleaziest bar you have ever been to before and then take all the charm away and you have this Shebeen. It was still morning time, but the drunks outnumbered the chairs by about 5 to 1 already. We bought a giant beer and Jake and I got the most of it before the drunks started bumming drinks whomI wasn't too keen on swapping backwash with. Then we were driven around to places much like I have seen in my travels to other third world countries, run down libraries, hospitals, police stations, ect... Then lunch time. A buffet at an authentic township restaurant. Only there were no black people eating their (except for Jabu who hasn't missed a meal since Mandela was imprisoned), only white tourists. It was a buffet and every unidentified meat looked suspiciously like cow brain fat from the market to me in my paranoid state. Still I swallowed some of it down and then had to swallow the exorbitant bill while Jabu no doubt took a kickback in the parking lot. The tour finished with a drive by of the house of Winnie Mandela, Nelson's ex-wife. From what I have learned about his lady she is a real witch. She has served time (though later been par$oned) for embezzlement, as well as, torture/murder. All in a days work. A huge uprising of the student population took place after her handprints were all over the brutal torture and murder of a 13 year old boy who played soccer for one of her teams. Still, with all the corruption surrounding her, she is planning on running for president when Thabo Mbeki is done with his current term. It's kind of sickening.
We also went to a rugby match that night. We saw the local Johannesburg Cats take on the Durban (pronounced Duhrbuhhn) Sharks. So the Cats suck big time and the game was a total blowout, but it was still a really cool experience. As an added bonus, I got my lifetime requirement of second hand smoke in the 2 hours that the match took. These people love their cigs like something else. We had one pair of binoculars and I managed to hog them most of the night. What could be so interesting you ask. Was it the hard hitting or raw savagery of the scrum, well some of the time, but the absolutely most intriguing thing on the field was the cheer squad. I mean these chicks didn't have a lick of rhythm between the 12 of them. I felt like I was watching the gymnastics competition of the Special Olympics. I seriously laughed my ass off. The rugby atmosphere, itself, was very much like an OU football game. There was tailgaiting, and cursing, and Monday-morning quarterbacks all talking in the stands about how they would have scrummed differently. Good stuff all around. I'm very glad we hadn't watched Tsotsi, yet, though. It is a South African movie that won the Oscar this year for foreign film. It's pretty good, but the problem is it takes place in Jo-Burg and shows the inner workings of the criminal element. I have to admit that it did scare me a little bit, and there are times here in Cape Town that I pull a quick look over the shoulder when walking alone at night, but the movie really freaked Jake out to the point that a few times before he left, I felt like we were a SWAT team, taking corners tactically, "covering" for each other and had we access to Kevlar, I'm sure he would have sewn together a full body suit for each of us.
Well, I am heading back to the US soon. I will put together one last blog of all the things I did here in Cape Town, including the wine tasting tour/kegger, the abseiling, the kloofing, the playing with penguins, the bouldering in the Atlantic Ocean ect..

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Photos

I'm White, Baby!!!!!!
At the Apartheid Museum, they randomly give you a card, like South Africans carried in the Apartheid era, which signifies what you are. I drew the evil oppresor race card and celebrated by hiring several "non-whites" to carry me through the museum.

Better luck next time.
Jayson was not so lucky. He came up black. This is honky attempt at looking gangsta. He has a wonderful "Bantu" education to look forward to. This was the apartheid policy developed by Malan and Verwoed to basically keep blacks subjugated. The Bantu education was meant to only equip the black children with the necessary literacy and talents to serve as maids, mine workers, and other menial jobs that God, and the Afrikaaners, saw fit for them to have.

From the Other Side
In those days, much like in the segregated South, blacks and whites were kept separate. In South Africa, there were also categories for Coloreds and Indians. There is a very large Indian population that lives here, in fact, Ghandi spent many years in Durban working on human rights here before going to India where he revolutionized his country. Coloreds are the people that were mixed with the very early settlers on the Cape. They are mainly Khoikhoi who were the hunter-gather people here first before the Zulu and other sub-saharan agricultural tribes drove them to the fringes and took most of their land. A history lesson for us all. The Afrikaaners were not the first, last, or only people to displace one people group through force from this country.

The match
That haze you see is actually the smoke from a million cigerettes. Pretty, ain't it.

Scrummin' it
I don't know what the hell is going on here. I think somebody lost a contact, but I can't really say, I was watching the cheerleaders.

Comments

[Peggy]

Chicken Surprise?
Hey! Thanks for sending me a link to this! It sounds like you are definitely having the expirience of a lifetime. Although I would love to see some of the sites and cultures there, I will choose Final Exams over Chicken Surprise and second hand smoke ANY day! We miss you at Starbucks, looking forward to your return! -Peggy