Notes on a Scandal! (Nick Guest-Blogs)

(February 22 to March 8, 2009)

This little project has convinced me that Sarah is the much better creative writer out of the pair of us. Hopefully the “artistic integrity” of the blog will not be too severely compromised. Yummo!

If my flights to/from S.A. were representative, people are not traveling in great numbers at the moment. The Continental flight Houston to Heathrow was among the first since 9/11 I have seen with empty seats, and seating Heathrow to Houston return was like Swiss cheese (I had 3 seats to myself). My $971 roundtrip was a bargain for a route normally costing ~$1,400… fares for April and May are even lower (albeit for low season). Routes cut, planes shrunk. P.S.: I now love veggie meals on planes.

South African Airways has especial problems. Heathrow to Cape Town was by far the worst international flight I have been on – a few scattered TVs played terrible movies (not just airplane-terrible; terrible-terrible 1980s trash). The food, my British seatmate noted, was mostly inedible (plain macaroni, greasy chicken, sketchy breakfast meats) and the service was awful. There have been stories in the S.A. papers about flight attendants and other SAA personnel smuggling drugs on the planes; this would explain a lot.

I had hoped flying SAA would give a taste of S.A., with South African crew and accents, but as Sarah has noted, there is a great diversity of South African accents, most straying far from my preconceptions. By far the most common “accent” in S.A. is inflected with one of the black-African languages. Among non-blacks, accents vary between Anglophones and Afrikaans speakers, and even then, there is a great variety. I was also frequently reminded that S.A. is a nation of English as a second language speakers… but I was impressed that many people commanded three, four, or often more languages.

It became immediately clear upon arrival that S.A. is a country of drivers, with public transport as thin and slow as Houston, or worse. Getting into Cape Town from Stellenbosch was 1:45… each way. My advice to anyone coming here would be, above all, get a car (or make friends with a driver). What had been a 30 minute walk to the train station was 5 minutes by car… we saw more in a half day driving the Winelands than I could have seen in two days by train. The possibilities in S.A. open up with a car…

However, I agree with Sarah’s appraisal that for the average American, the country is not drivable. Beyond manual transmissions and left-hand driving, S.A. drivers are awful – worse than Polish drivers (who occasionally would obey stop lights and signs) and in the league with Ukrainian drivers, breezing across lanes, blowing stop signs, ripping through small streets at high speeds, and disregarding pedestrians.

I drove at one point with my British friend from the plane through Cape Town; I was amazed at their handling of traffic, and I was super stressed just watching the driving. It was much worse than Manhattan, which is supposed to be un-drivable for out-of-towners, with trucks cutting into traffic from the shoulder, and lanes holding no meaning. On the plus side, the road network is good and well maintained (if poorly signposted in places).

Geographically, the Western Cape, which is all I really saw, was varied… The Winelands around Stellenbosch reminded me of the winey areas of California… I guess that is obvious. The broad expanse between Cape Town and Stellenbosch, as well as the mountains, reminded me of parts of Arizona, or West Texas – dry but not desert, mountains, and green. The seashore reminded me of Hawaii, with lush, beautiful mountains, clouds and mists, cliffs, crashing waves, and so on. The main difference with Hawaii (and why I suspect the area is not more of a tourist haven than it already is) is that the water is uncomfortably cold, and largely un-swimmable due to currents and temperature. Also, winds on the Atlantic seaboard were intolerable (sand in the eyes!).
Weather-wise, I was not rained on once while in S.A. For several days it was 40 to 45 C in Paarl, near Stellenbosch, igniting fires which turned the sky brown, generated smoke in Stellenbosch, and smoldered orange on the mountains at night. At night it usually remained warm and sweaty… I went through clothes, and showers, quickly in S.A. No one has A/C in their homes that I could see, not even in the upper-middle class suburbs. In general, temperatures in Stellenbosch were like a middling-hot Houston summer day and night, around 85 to 90, dry, but with intense, skin blistering UV and sunlight.

The food was unexpected. I was expecting “South African” food – bobotie meatloaf, lots of corn/mealie based food, and so on. However, having been here, I got the sense that there really is no such thing as “South African cuisine.” Yes, the food is meat heavy – as expected – and it is possible to order game (I had Ostrich and Springbok; Kudu and others were available). Braiis seemed common –almost daily – all bring your own meat.

However, among affluent whites, the food I saw was light European – sandwiches, pastas, salads. “Traditional” S.A. dishes needed to be searched out, like in Germany – this is not the food normal people eat daily. There seemed to be quite a strong, late night street-café culture in Stellenbosch, and a taste for wine. I (and Sarah) really liked Malva pudding, which is sorta Dutch, but most of what we ate was just normal, Western food.

With regard to money,., the exchange rate was very favorable – 10 Rands to the dollar – so S.A. is currently miraculously cheap. Some sample items – smoothie 19 Rand (large), Soap 4R, Milk liter 12R, 1KG Corn flakes – 17R, 1st class train to Cape Town 12R, dessert 22R, nice bottle of wine 19 to 29R.

Sarah and I had a particularly remarkable meal – Ciabatta and hummus, veggie sandwiches and salad, fried chicken and fries, and malva pudding… at a super nice restaurant… for 109R ($10.90). Nice meals for 2 totaled 80R to 150R. That’s less than one sandwich at Katz’s. Meanwhile, whereas I had brought $300 in “starter money” for South Africa, I found that this was far, far more than I needed to get me through 2 weeks.

How are the people? Well… as you might expect, South Africans are mainly black-African. And there are coloured people, of an interesting array of extractions, and appearing quite diverse. But the people I found most interesting (and hilarious) were the white Stellenbosch students.
I saw S.U. as a campus full of rugby players and beauty queens – huge, bulky, meaty-headed boys, often with their hair bleached, and the occasional mullet – and petite, thin, over-tan girls in summer dresses. The boys seemed to like drinking heavily, tossing rugby balls, listening to loud, bad American music, riding dirt bikes and jeeps, and yelling masculinely. Maybe Afrikaaners are the Texans of Africa?

I also noticed the older (40-50) South African women looked very tan and dry… like raisins… and often favored short, bleached hair. Oh, and everyone drives, so that is where you see them, rather than on the street.

I was surprised by the number of Muslims/Cape Malays in Cape Town. I had been under the impression that this was a small, minor remnant of a former population, but everywhere I went I saw halaal-meats stores, “halaal” markings on menus, women in headscarves and men with skullcaps, so as far as I can tell, their influence is still large. Even Stellenbosch sports a mosque.
Economically, I was expecting something like Poland – the two countries have nearly the same GDP per capita, so I expected medium standards of living, medium quality of life, medium quality of facilities. And of course I expected somewhat more economic inequity.

Despite expecting this inequity, I was still surprised by the degree to which S.A.’s extreme economic disparity. It is not just a contrast between, say, U.S. upper-middle class suburban and ghetto life, at least from my experience in Houston – it is a group living fabulously well, as luxuriously (or, in some respects, more luxuriously) than in the U.S. in this natural wonderland – think golf clubs, horseback riding, wine, cricketing, biking, and so on – and another, vastly larger group, living in abject poverty, far worse than American ghettos… vast corrugated metal squatters’ camps. For some reason I was really struck when I was walking on the street and saw a man pick up a cigarette butt another had discarded to smoke.

What’s the deal with South Africa and crime? I don’t really know (I was only in S.A. two weeks, in a particularly safe region; I personally was not mugged or threatened). It is hard to get a clear sense of the issue from South Africans. My British friend’s aunt knew little about the safety of trains because she herself had never ridden one. Sarah’s Afrikaans teacher advised students never to ride the trains, but I found them to be safe and giving a good cross section of S.A., even when I mistakenly rode in “dangerous” second class.

Speaking of second class, one of the weirdest “I am in Africa” moments was riding in second class and realizing “statistically, about one in four of these people has HIV.” Also, I was also advised that TB (drug resistant) is a major problem in townships (a pretty name for, mostly, vast corrugated-metal slums), owing to immune-compromised HIV patients.

Back to crime – It seems that given both lingering racial suspicions and American-style crime hysteria, people could easily have very cloudy ideas of their own risks. After all, in the U.S., we have unrealistic fears of sexual predators, abductions, Myspace pedophiles, and the dangers of the cities… Which are mostly overhype and just keep (white, suburban) people locked up at home, scared. But, despite my acute sense of safety, poshness, and criminality-overhype in S.A., I imagine the statistics don’t lie that crime is bad in S.A. I just took reasonable precautions, so I did not see any of it.

It seems to vary by location, J-burg supposedly being worst. Even in the “most relaxed city in Africa” (Cape Town) crime seems to be on everyone’s (or, all the white people’s?) minds. Precautions vary: Cape Town was 8 or 10 foot tall, white, bricked walls, electric wire or barbed wire on top, and armed response signs; Stellenbosh was modest iron fences with barbed tops (and even some homes without such fencing) and armed response signs. Everyone had an armed-response panic button.

The causes of S.A. crime levels? I don’t know. It might be inequity (and I think this is by far the strongest part), but other societies are unequal. It might be cultural (a la gun crime in the US, lack of murders in Saudi, etc). It might have something to do with race, drugs, alcohol, poverty, disease, politics, the incredible quantity of young people here/age imbalance, education, something else, or all the above.

It feels like the crime panic in S.A. is also generated, not because anything is *absolutely* bad in South Africa – it is actually quite nice, posh, and Western for a segment of society, better than the Czech Republic or Poland, and even some of Western Europe. Parts of S.A. feel like big country clubs and wine estates (because they are).

The problem seems to be *relative* – I imagine inhabiting safe and secure place like the suburban U.S… and then suddenly, large swaths of the U.S. become as dangerous, or more so, than the worst parts of Mexico. Even if your little bubble was not acutely affected, it would be understandable to be panicked about crime. I got the feeling that things are bad in some absolute sense, but mainly relative to how they used to be.

Also is the question of who is being victimized… and by what kinds of crime. Murder here is around tenth in the world… I don’t know the stats on property crime… and rape is supposed to be unparalleled. But who is this affecting? Blacks, whites, rich, poor? For example, in the U.S., poor-on-poor and minority-on-minority crime is disproportionately enormous; if the statistics pertaining to these populations extended not to 20% or 40% of the population, as in the U.S., but 75% or more as in SA, the U.S. would have a rather scary crime rate too, and start to resemble S.A.

Meanwhile, the security at Sarah’s dorm is terrible… well, maybe. I came in and out of the compound two to four times daily for two weeks and not once did I get hassled by the guards who are supposed to check everyone’s ID and make sure they are residents. Strangely though, these same (black-African) guards seemed to check the ID of any black person coming through the gates. Sarah’s dorm windows have ultra meaty metal security bars/lattice, but the front door just has a pad lock, so it is rather like living in a locker.

A few other assorted observations… the water was drinkable… very much a first-world trait. Also, I thought it was amusing how Cape Town shuts down at 5:00pm, and the train station is mostly cleared out by 5:30 p.m. as people race to get out of the city before dark. Adjacent to the train station is the “Golden Acre” mall – clearly constructed for the enjoyment of one group some years ago, and now full of all kinds of people – showing some signs of deterioration and grime, but mainly lively. The markets adjacent to (and above) the train station were also remarkable – meat, cold drinks, Chinese import crap, haircuts, clothing, cloth, etc.

At any rate, for me as a tourist, I never felt at risk, and thought the country was crazy-posh. South Africa seems really like two utterly different worlds appended to each other, experiencing utterly disparate qualities of life. One is utterly, completely, un-blemished-ly first-world, without any sign of decay or inconvenience; the other, not.

There is no getting around the issue of race in S.A.. In the US, it’s often easy to dodge the race issue, since we are largely (self) segregated. In S.A. it is far harder to avoid frequent race mixing, and some uncomfortable issues that come out of it. There seems to be a palatable tension in the air. On many occasions I got the distinct sense that “you don’t belong here, so I will treat you poorly” directed at me.

It’s hard to appraise the “legitimacy” of this attitude. White people no more (or less) “belong” in S.A. than they do in the U.S. – it just happens that in the U.S. the native population was wiped out starting in the 1500s and 1600s and is now utterly marginalized, whereas in S.A. they are a majority.

I guess it could become a bit tense living in a world of 80% Native Americans, especially with white people having spent the last several hundred years maltreating them.

It’s hard to know how to feel about this tension, or other feelings of “I don’t belong” or “I should feel guilty” – on the one hand, it is horrible for any group to have been historically abused… but given that much of my family was in Ukraine getting pogrom’d through the 1920s, and had nothing to do with the African colonial situation, it is also hard for me to see myself as responsible, or feel white liberal guilt too acutely, any more than I do for the social ills in the U.S., or Mexico, or anywhere else…

I read “this exhibit makes me ashamed to be white” written in the guestbook of of the District Six (& Apartheid) Museum in Cape Town. How do you respond to something like this?
I was also thinking a lot about the issue of what is exploitative, and what is not. The impression I got was that the land of South Africa is a natural paradise, ripe for tourism. And if tourism occurs, it might lift up economic circumstances and create jobs, as it surely does in Hawaii, Orlando, Las Vegas, and so on. There does not seem to be an especial reason to feel guilty in touring South Africa, supporting the local economy.

Yet it is hard for me to shake this feeling of exploitation, and it is hard to pin down why. Traveling in Ukraine, despite the economic differential between myself and the everyman, I did not often feel guilty about being there, or that I was exploiting them… yet in S.A. it feels uncomfortable. There is something disturbingly zoo-like and dehumanizing about double-decker busses of 40-50-60 year old white people driving past a shanty town and taking photos. Class issue? Race issue? It has something to do with dignity, I think.

What about tourists buying “African” drums and getting faces painted at a “traditional” restaurant while wearing “traditional clothes,” or going to a “cultural village” to connect with native song and dance? Or urban, educated, black Cape Town residents dressing down in “tribal garb” and war paint, performing chants and drumming on the street for tourist tips? These all generate revenue for S.A. Is this just crappy tourism and bad, ignorant travel practice, or is it something more problematic?

In any case, the color difference (/ barrier) can make the experience of S.A., even walking the streets, feel like an aquarium, provoking a distinct awareness of the outside looking in. Of course, we always do this as travelers/tourists, but it the feeling is acute here.
I don’t know… I don’t have any answers.

Another thing I experienced in S.A. is getting hassled on the street. Depending on where I was, I might get hassled for money, by an “instant friend” grabbing my shoulder, by someone trying to sell me something or give me an advert card (“Fucky-delight!” “What, you want something else?” – clearly I project “GAY!”), or seeking to harass or tease, perhaps once or twice on an average trip in Stellenbosch, perhaps every 15 minutes in Cape Town, or every 5 minutes in touristy Cape Town. It was incessant.

It got to the point where as soon as I heard someone speak to me, or gesture at me, or move toward me on the street, I would move away at speed, and avoid eye contact. But, then, I did this as someone (I think honestly) asked me for the time of day, and as I sped away they yelled after me “The time! I asked for the time!” What are the implications of this?

Part of the problem with traveling in S.A. while white is that you wear a giant signboard reading “I am rich, I am likely foreign, and I likely don’t know anything about S.A.” In Ukraine I dumped all clothing with roman letters, dressed down, and felt like I blended in somewhat – poorly, but somewhat. I imagine I would have been subject to similar harassment there if I wore my “rich, ignorant, foolish American” sign around Odessa.

Another racial/class issue is the division of labor in S.A. It starts flying in from London – white pilots, black flight attendants. Service jobs – attendants at auto garages (petrol stations), police, fast food workers, foodservice – all black. On the other hand, waiters at finer restaurants, train drivers, professors – white. Exceptions, of course, too. In the U.S. (and U.K., I thought while there) we have basically the same kinds of issues.

Also there seems to be a lot of extra labor floating around which is inefficiently employed – for example, bathroom attendants, full service gas station employees sitting idle, or the general sense of having far too many people doing the same job, especially in government (why does a provincial train station need 4 or 5 ticket checkers?). Can this be healthy?

Regarding departures, I observed on the flight to S.A., as well as outbound, that there is a particular demographic that seems to be visiting South Africa in large numbers… the middle-age crisis crowd. The flight in was heavy on 40-50-60 year olds with graying hair, as was the red tourist bus I was once compelled to ride across town. It’s a bit of a luxury destination for the well-heeled, and lighter on young people and backpackers.

To wit, re:rich white middle aged people, I was told on my return flight I should expect tons of 1 meter tall wooden giraffes on the plane, as they are too fragile to go under the aircraft. I only spotted one giraffe in the overhead bin next to me; there may have been more.

*******

Well, I guess my last observation from this trip is that, to an unusual degree for my usually well-planned life, this trip bore out the truism that life and fate can work out very strangely, and differently from how we expect.

I thought my trip here would involve tons of movement around South Africa and abroad. As it turned out, I mostly spent time at the Uni in Stellenbosch, absorbing the town’s daily routine via osmosis, with something like 5 or 6 days in Cape Town. This slower style of travel was new too me, but still quite nice. Sarah and I would usually go out to dinner at night… I might shop, study, or wander during the day while she was in class.

I would have never guessed that sullen, sociopathic me would meet and talk to someone my own age on the plane to S.A. I ended traveling with my Oxford friend around Simon’s Town, to their family’s home near Newlands for dinner, to Kirstenbosch Gardens, the Atlantic Seaboard, V&A, Table Mountain, Chapman’s Peak, Downtown, the Castle, and the Winelands with Sarah. So odd.
Also there was Sarah’s injury at Cederberg, which impeded drinking (due to the meds), dancing, and other important activities placing pressures on the lower back. I guess breaking one’s vertebrae is akin to converting to Baptism? But she also spent a lot of time in the dorm, so we could talk and reconnect. Hopefully she feels I took good care of her…

Most oddly, by my very action of coming down here, I seem to have disturbed the electric winds of an empty universe enough to have played a minor role in a broken marriage engagement, and in another Rice student conceiving of flying halfway around the world to visit his love. Weird. Very weird.