South Africa-Lion Park

Chris's hot water heater hasn't been working for a few days. We're waiting for the repairman to come. They've come twice already to fix it, but each time the fix only lasted a few days. They were supposed to be here at 10:30, but it's already 11:30 and they haven't come. The power is out again (load-shedding), so even if they got here now they couldn't do anything until the power comes back on. "Africa is where you come to wait": Paul Theroux while he was in Cairo waiting for his Sudanese visa.

We're supposed to go to the Lion Park today. We may not make it because of waiting for the repairman. Chris shows me pictures from last time he was in Swaziland. He was the old man and his fiancee was the aunt. Why? Do the adults go somewhere else to work? No, it's because of HIV. They have a 40% HIV rate. The life expectancy in Swaziland right now is about 40 years old.

Chris and I got into several varied conversations while waiting for the water heater repairman, including democratic party convention superdelegates, 1970's South African-Israeli cooperation on nuclear weapons, international politics and islam, and african development. Several interesting books he had:

The Shackled Continent: Africa's Past, Present and Future by Robert Guest
Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town by Paul Theroux
The Trouble with Africa: Why Foreign Aid isn't Working by Robert Calderisi
The Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics by Eric Beinhocker
(the last one, I think, has nothing specifically to do with Africa)

1:45pm. We give up on the repairman and leave for the lion park.
2:20pm. We're almost to Lion Country Safari. Chris wouldn't let me have the laptop out to take notes while we were in city traffic because he didn't want some to do a "smash and grab" to get it.

In the last few minutes we've gone from city to rural, without any real suburbs in the middle.

Chris thinks his friends from here will all probably leave within 5 years, if things keep going how they are going. And the country will go down hill further. Does that mean that they shouldn't have ended apartheid like they did? No, I'm not sure of any better way they could have done it. At least it was peaceful. But it may have a lesson for Israel: They cannot end their "apartheid" without losing their own life also.

How much do white South African's make? Chris guesses about $25,000 per year on average. Cost of many things are low in SA, so you can live quite well here on that. But if you want to travel abroad beyond Africa, that can't buy much. Before Apartheid the exchange rate was different and they earned about double that in dollars. Their purchasing power of whites in SA has actually increased since apartheid stopped, but the purchasing power of blacks has gone down since apartheid. I'm not sure if I understand that.

In the Lion Park we look at the baby lions & feed the giraffes. I've fed giraffes in Florida before, so I'm not too impressed by that. Then we get to go in and pet the baby lions. They're indifferent to our presence, perhaps annoyed. But where can you do this in the states?


Jackals & hyenas. Antelope. Lioness jumping into a tree. Lazy lions. Lion just a few inches from the car window. It's great, and yet it's amazing how quickly it becomes ordinary.

We drive back and stop at the shopping mall. We both need to buy mosquito-impregnated clothes for Zambia. I am exhausted because of the time zone change.

A friend asked via email: "Have you spotted any 'flame throwers' on the local transportation? Would like to confirm that bit of information with the locals while you're there." I asked Susan, Chris's fiancee: "South African's say it's bullshit. I've never seen one. But I've also never seen a carjacking, and I know they happen."

Jeff & his father Greg and Sean showed up after dinner for some food & drinks.

What about the flamethrower in the car legend? "There was one guy who manually did that to his own car, and he was convicted of murder and is in jail now. There was another guy who electrified his car so he zapped and killed a guy who was carjacking him. He's in jail too." The power is out, so I take his word on it. Later, when the power comes back on, I check the web. A few CNN and other news articles that report on it, but don't provide any verifiable information. But wikipedia provides more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaster_(flamethrower)

Jeff is white but not afrikanner. He's german/irish/other ethnic descent. He's into acting and wants to move to London or the US to go to school, study and try to get into acting. He was asking about schools, cities, living in the states, visas, green cards. It's amazing how much you can make up or guess about to answer someone when you don't really know what you're saying.

Jeff and Greg are leaving. Sean already left. Jeff and Greg are going to Brady's, but Chris is tired and doesn't want to go. I borrow Chris's car and his cellphone and go out with them, but Brady's is closed. The power came back on, and their computer wouldn't start properly, so they were closing. (They were while the power was out, but they close when the power turns back on?). So I drive back to Chris's.

Tomorrow we're going to Zambia near Victoria Falls. We're going to stay at a backpacker hotel named Jollyboys. Chris and Susan are looking forward to this as a luxury, because at least they should have hot water.