The hat guy
One thing my wife and I have noticed in South Africa is there is a strong spirit of entrepreneurship here. All over the place folks have set up stalls to sell things. When we were staying in Durban, near the beach were these roofed places that were bursting with shirts, hats, beach toys and all sorts of other things. At sunset they were taken away and it was empty. At dawn the next day they were filling them up again.
We weren’t surprised yesterday to find that even though our ship is docked in a coal yard, by the time we got back from our tour, there were a bunch of folks outside it selling things.
(Sadly a bunch of it looks like the stuff we saw in the Atlanta airport that said “bring this into the US and we’ll take it away from you and arrest you…)
The biggest example of this is the hat guy.
We were coming back from the hippo place on our tour bus through the town of Richard’s Bay. As I had the window seat on the way out, I let my wife have it on the way back, so was on the inside aside of the bus.
We stopped at a traffic light and standing on the island between directions was a man in a fancy leather hat.
“That’s a nice hat,” I thought to myself.
The man’s head lifted up and he looked right at me and grinned.
He reached behind his back and pulled out another hat just like the one he was wearing and nodded at me.
I shook my head no.
He grinned wider and nodded yes in a very big way and started making his way towards the bus through the traffic.
I shook my head no again.
He looked me in the eye with a look that said “we both know you want this hat”, but then the bus driver who was unaware of all this drove forward as the light had turned green.
I watched the hat seller look at me with a “I let a big on get away” look and we drove back to the ship.
I like leather hats. I have several. His was cool.
But, the rules were very clear about bring nothing made from animal parts into the US. So, I would only have had the hat for a few days.
Just as well the bus pulled away…