What Happened Next
At that one night in Johannesburg last week, greenfizzpops and dje took me to a poly dinner. One of the people I met gave me her 'phone number, suggesting I give her a call so she can meet me at the airport for that five-hour stopover I have in Jo'burg tomorrow. But on Monday I found myself unexpectedly needing to spend another night in said city, so I gave her a call to see if she might be able to couch surf with half a day's notice.
She was delighted, and the timing couldn't have been better: her plans for that afternoon and evening had just fallen through. She had an hour or two worth of errands to run before she could meet me, but that's how long it took the airline to find my baggage, so again, it all worked out perfectly.
We spent the afternoon driving around Gauteng. The landscape felt like many parts of Australia: dry and dominant with far-away mountain ranges. But once we were off the freeways (modern, multi-lane European-style which felt out of place in this financially troubled country) the infrastructure became more like the haphazard, dusty highways of Chile. Every five or ten minutes there was a four-way stop sign or another intersection where you had to make a turn to follow the highway, and on every corner, somebody tried to sell you oranges or melting chocolate or 'phone chargers or vegetables I didn't recognise.
My companion has a place she likes to escape to every couple of weeks: the rustic Hartebeespoort Dam. It was a mix of artistic detail and sad neglect. The steep gorge boasted a rich brown colour, and in the distance was lined with housing that had skyrocketed in value in the last five years. The water it held back was lined with lilies and green scum with a bit of rubbish here and there. Birds hopped from lily pad to lily pad, occasionally stumbling over an empty drink container. The one-lane road across the dam snaked through a tunnel before it became a real highway again, and we set off for the next not-tourist site.
We stopped at what could be described as a roadhouse, an old building with a half-arsed restaurant that sold memorabilia for the local area. This was the first place I'd visited on this trip where English wasn't spoken, so I was able to put my theories about Dutch-to-Afrikaans conversion to the test. They passed... sort of.
Afrikaans was my travelling companion's first language. But even while she was speaking, there was an obvious inner conflict. This was her culture, her childhood: old biscuit tins and bottles and a language that is a defiant alternative to English. She's a descendant of the Boers. She loves and hates her heritage-it's her roots, but the racism sickens her. Surely not all the traditions are racist, though? Surely a culture could own up to its bad ways of life and continue with the good? Maybe, but with Apartheid still burned in every adult's living memory, Boer tradition is just too big a trigger for countless unresolved issues, so recognition of it on a national level is very subtle.
And things continue to change. Thabo Mbeki, Nelson Mandela's successor, resigned the previous day because of a corruption scandal. Here's a picture of me in front of South Africa's Parliament building, when a special, historic session was in place to decide what the hell to do next.
Yep, we ended up in Pretoria. And we were where many people had warned me not to go: the inner city of a South African capital. And it was getting dark.
It didn't look particularly impoverished; it was more like one of the rougher parts of Oakland, but more densely populated, and no boom boom cars. I didn't see any signs of crime nor violence-every second vehicle was either a cop car or a private security vehicle anyhow. But there was a very, very strong sense of anger in the air. Anger, defensiveness... you could see it in the way people were walking. When passers by greeted each other, it sounded like they were going to kill each other. Everyone was dressed sharply, like out of a Rolling Stone magazine-appearance counts for a lot here, even when you're living in a tip. But they were hanging out in the street (literally in the street) with not much to do.
The saddest thing was seeing all the beautiful, historic buildings in the middle of it all. They weren't being abused, but they weren't being appreciated, either. Few people dared to come see them. I felt privileged to have had the chance, but I didn't take any photos-I didn't feel comfortable being noticed as the only white man the eye could see, with an Afrikaaner who didn't seem to know the way back to the freeway.
I did get a photo of the University of South Africa, the biggest university building I'd ever seen. It's some ten storeys high but much, much wider. I thought UTS was a concrete jungle!
We stopped at a very good (and amazingly inexpensive) restaurant for dinner, and yes, she was able to put a roof over my head that night. She shared her place with three dogs and three cats. It was large but modest. It had a security fence with a remote-controlled gate and she made sure all the doors and windows were locked, but the top level was open and airy, so for the first time since I'd arrived in South Africa, I didn't feel like I was sleeping in a fortress. It was a great night's sleep after a pretty adventureous day.