Location: PRETORIA, SOUTH AFRICA
I’ve just spent the last three days in Johannesburg and Pretoria, South Africa. Although I am in a completely different country, and for that matter on a different continent, I was surprised by the commonalities between our two countries. In fact, it took very little time to assimilate, which is why it has been so difficult to become inspired by the unusual, like I did with my China entry. For instance, I spent an afternoon shopping at the Menlyn Mall in Pretoria. Besides the occasional Afrikaans-translation difficulty and converting Rand to Dollars, we shopped at GAP, Diesel Jeans, Crocs, Crabtree & Evelyn and the Body Shop.
Yet despite the daily contact with the poor, the wealthy board themselves into their houses to avoid further contact. The result is a country that resembles a war zone not unlike the rest of the continent. To keep out the spiking crime, houses are surrounded by concrete walls, sharp fence toppers, barbed wire, and motion detectors. Multi-million dollar homes have coquina wire and concrete bricks surrounding their exquisitely decorated façade. Armed-guards stand at attention in front of convenience stories, eyeing down every customer who seems unfazed by their presence. I can’t say I saw anyone give anyone else money or food in my four days. That is not to say that it doesn’t happen, but I just didn’t see it. I can understand though because it is a hard dilemma; either become hardened by the sights or become overwhelmed. I guess I succumbed to being overwhelmed in this country, which is rapidly becoming Africa’s only first world country. As the host of the 2010 World Cup, it will be interesting to see how the rest of the world judges it. As for me: I came. I saw. I left.
I’ve just spent the last three days in Johannesburg and Pretoria, South Africa. Although I am in a completely different country, and for that matter on a different continent, I was surprised by the commonalities between our two countries. In fact, it took very little time to assimilate, which is why it has been so difficult to become inspired by the unusual, like I did with my China entry. For instance, I spent an afternoon shopping at the Menlyn Mall in Pretoria. Besides the occasional Afrikaans-translation difficulty and converting Rand to Dollars, we shopped at GAP, Diesel Jeans, Crocs, Crabtree & Evelyn and the Body Shop.
I just didn’t feel like I was in Africa. While I didn’t expect a bloody war zone or jungle people with no clothes on, I didn’t expect a metropolitan city. I guess I expected vast desert wastelands, plains game and the Big Five walking on the side of the roads and gravel roads as main infrastructures. Instead, I got a city with modern buildings and highways, malls and movie theaters, and American comfort food. Aside from reuniting with friends we hadn’t seen in 13 years, I really didn’t enjoy it.
Although South Africa didn’t meet my expectations for a “typical Africa”, it did have many negative “typical Africa” aspects: squatter villages, begging children, immense poverty, intensely violent crimes, “war zones” and the wealthy people’s “immunity” from its existence. For most Americans, advertisements of starving children in Africa are a regular sight. I can even remember when my mother used the “there are starving children in Africa” excuse to sell me on her chicken cacciatore. But until you are eye to eye with it, it still feels a world away. But now I am on the continent, in their world, and looking out my car window into the blood-shot eyes of a local street beggar.
At every intersection and red light there is a different person with a different story. On evening, I saw a white man standing in the middle of the street lane, with no shoes on, while it is around 40 degrees outside. Then there were young, black males with their faces painted white, dancing in between the cars, hoping for some change. I made the mistake of coming to a red light with my window down, wherein a homeless druggie, who was pawning wooden cross necklaces in the center of the street, took the opportunity to curse the latest South African president, Jacob Zumba, for the beggar’s inability to find work in this city.
Yet despite the daily contact with the poor, the wealthy board themselves into their houses to avoid further contact. The result is a country that resembles a war zone not unlike the rest of the continent. To keep out the spiking crime, houses are surrounded by concrete walls, sharp fence toppers, barbed wire, and motion detectors. Multi-million dollar homes have coquina wire and concrete bricks surrounding their exquisitely decorated façade. Armed-guards stand at attention in front of convenience stories, eyeing down every customer who seems unfazed by their presence. I can’t say I saw anyone give anyone else money or food in my four days. That is not to say that it doesn’t happen, but I just didn’t see it. I can understand though because it is a hard dilemma; either become hardened by the sights or become overwhelmed. I guess I succumbed to being overwhelmed in this country, which is rapidly becoming Africa’s only first world country. As the host of the 2010 World Cup, it will be interesting to see how the rest of the world judges it. As for me: I came. I saw. I left.
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