Missive from the Congo 014

Originally posted on Mon, 12 Feb 2007 22:25:50 +0200

Well I’m back in Kisangani after almost three weeks off so I guess I’d better get back to writing missives. As you know, Chantal and I were away on holidays. We spent our holiday in Africa but more importantly back in civilization; namely South Africa. Chantal met me in the capital of the Republic of South Africa, Johannesburg. From there we proceeded to the southern end of the country and continent, namely the Western Cape. We had a wonderful time. We split our time between Mossel Bay (on the Indian Ocean), Franschhoek (in the vineyards) and Cape Town (in the bistros).

The view from our room in Mossel Bay

In many ways South Africa, or at least the Western Cape, is like North America or southern Europe. For one thing, it is a civilized country. After three months in the Congo, it was nice to have reliable electricity, tap water you can drink and a multitude of good restaurants to choose from.

Nonetheless it was a very different experience. First of all, they drive on the left side of the road, like the British. I must admit that this issue was my greatest concern before going over. I was very concerned about getting into an accident because I was in the wrong lane. It turned out to be very easy to manage. Everything from the road signs, to the lines on the roads, to the placement of the steering wheel push you to the correct (left) side of the road. There were a few hesitations at intersections but on the whole it went well. I did hedge my bets by getting a car with an automatic transmission though. I didn’t think I would be able to concentrate on staying to the left and synchronize change gears with the wrong hand at the same time.

A wine tour on horse back

Language was another difference that we noticed, and I don’t mean Afrikaans (Afrikaans is their version of Dutch spoken in South Africa). I fully expected that. What was surprising was some of the English words being used. For example, I asked for directions to some place or other and was told to “go to the third robot and turn left”. I figured out from the context what they meant but it was very bizarre to my mind. It seems that traffic lights are called “robot”, don’t ask me why. Other words that were very different included “learners” or “scholars”. They are talking about students, of any age. I was told by some South Africans here is Kisangani, that “student” picked up some negative connotation at some point and so now they are “learners” or “scholars”.

Table Mountain

The currency was also a little bit of a challenge. Their currency is the Rand. It is, fortunately, a decimal based currency with the Rand being the dollar and smaller units being cents. So far so good. The issue, albeit a minor one, was that the Canadian dollar is worth six Rand. So you have to divide all prices by six. Prices were generally very reasonable (bordering on inexpensive) but just seemed high until you did the math. Three hundred and fifty Rand just seemed to be a lot of money for supper, even a very good one. Fifty-eight dollars, on the other hand, was much more reasonable.

Cape of Good Hope

There were numerous other little things; like the maid at every B&B we stayed at, the children and adults walking bare foot in the grocery store or mall, the huge number of security guards, among others. South Africa was just different enough to be exotic but similar enough to be comfortable. I won't bother saying how we had a wonderful doing X or seeing Y. It is enough to say we had a terrific time. So good, we may go back to do and see some of the things we missed this time. Now all I have to do is live on the memories of a good vacation for the next ten weeks...

Have a good week.

John