Finally after having returned to a warm country, unlike the African continent where I had just spent the last three months freezing my bum off, I found myself waking up last night not because I was too cold, but rather because I was too hot. Having a dense mass of hair pressed close against me was not helping. I tried moving away, rolling over into the other corner of my bed, but he would follow, pressing himself as close to me as possible. Eventually I had had enough and decided to kick him out of my bed, even though my heart ached at the cruelty that I was about to commit. There was no avoiding it though, Kuba had to go. If I was going to get a good nights sleep then my little puppy, whom I hadn’t seen for three months, would not be able to sleep with me. Such is life; you’re always either to hot or too cold.
The last few days in Jo’Burg were great. After the final truck ride filled with quintessential Italian vocabulary learning, we finally arrived in the world’s safest cities. It is so safe there that everyone whom we spoke with had not been downtown in the last two years and if they had, they did not stop their car. So after having been dropped off in a posh neighbourhood which I would equate with say North or West-Vancouver, we were given free reign to do what we wished with the remaining three days of our time in Africa. We could do anything we wanted, well except for: leave the area, walk at night, walk alone, go downtown, go anywhere else, hop into a taxi ourselves, or pretty much do anything that was outside of the two block radius which was deemed as ‘pretty safe’ so long as we were in a group.
Please don’t take me seriously. I’ve just spent the last few days showing a new friend around Vancouver and enjoying every single minute where I was able to convince her of something outlandish and completely untrue – so the sarcasm and story telling has taken hold of me and has also found its way into this blog. But seriously, Jo’ Burg is definitively not a city you want to roam around and especially not if you don’t know it. We did speak to quite a few locals who were not joking when they said that they never go to the center and do not advise for any of us to go there. One thing which makes Jo’ Burg and South Africa so dangerous (more so than Nairobi), is the fact of how readily available guns are. In Nairobi or Dar es Salam you might get robbed or be kidnapped, but only on rare occasions will there be guns involved. In Jo’ Burg, on the other hand, that is the norm. We saw a guy leaning against a car with an AK47 sticking out the back of his pants. Our driver informed us that he was a cop, but I saw no marked vehicle anywhere or any form of uniform or anything else that might indicate that this was a police officer. Equally well could have been my neighbour from down the street.
But yeah… according to Julita, Jo’ Burg was the best part of all of Africa. The rest could just as well not have existed. Julita decided that South Africa was definitively a place that she would love to go back to – maybe even next year (regardless of the safety concerns). The reason for this – well, one should think it would be obvious: nice restaurants and fantastic malls. Not having bought enough things up to this point, only a measly two wooden statues weighing approximately 17 kg and a stone statue weighing another 16 kg, not to mention the 6 paintings, couple wooden bowls, some candle holders and a few more soapstone carvings, Julita decided that she needed some placemats, a duvet cover, and can’t forget the clothes. The unfortunate thing was that whatever Julita liked I generally liked. She’s got a pretty good sense of taste, just a bad sense of weight and packing. So once she made up her mind that she was going to buy something and that she would somehow manage to fit it into her luggage, I had no excuse to justify me not purchasing the same. As a result, we left Jo’ Burg with two queen size duvet covers, 14 place settings for our dinner tables and a whole bunch of clothes. It was a miracle that we didn’t end up having any excess baggage – but that’s a whole different story all on it’s own. The second miracle that we experience in Jo’ Burg was my success in preventing Julita from buying a carpet (or as some would call a rug). I truly don’t know how we would have lugged that home with us.
But yeah, aside for the shopping center, the Italian restaurants inside it, and the movie theatre, we did not see much of Jo’ Burg. We did go on a Soweto Townships tour – but that was manly comprised of sitting in a car and driving through all the different streets. Nevertheless, Jo’ Burg was Julita’s favourite city.
So it was in Jo’ Burg that we said our good-byes to Rommy and her fantastic cooking (however, there was no shortage of phenomenal Italian restaurants in the mall, so we did not have to go completely cold turkey). Three days later, on July 26th we headed for the airport ready to go home. With all our luggage it was a truly nerve-racking experience. Our huge wooden statues were packed as two pieces of luggage (one 19kg the other 17kg). On top of that we had our backpacks stuffed to the brim and an endless amount of carryon bags. In my case my carryon was my backpack with my laptop and everything heavy that I could stuff into it (weighing probably at least about 13kg), then my camera bag (another 10 kg or so), then some paintings, and the duty free purchases that I made. In Julita’s case it was her 16kg statue stuffed into her backpack along with a few other smaller bags and toiletry kits. Not wanting to look like two bag ladies or pack-men(women) we decided to leave all our carryons with Matt and Tracy (who were on the same flight as us) and headed off to the counters to check in all our other bags. Turns out that in Jo’ Burg they weigh your entire carts as you approach the check-in desks. By some miracle (I truly don’t know how), between the two of us we had 94kg of check-in baggage and since we were officially allowed 92kg, they let us through without charging any extra. After all the formalities we went back to where Matt and Tracy were waiting and picked up the remaining 45kg of baggage that we had left with them. You should have seen Julita trying to put on her 16-17kg backpack. Seeing her take it off for the x-ray machines was yet another entertaining sight – especially when the airport official lady decided to check it out and tried to lift it like all other bags that normally go through the conveyor. After a bit of a grunt and some preparation, she managed to lift it off and place it on another table where the inspection proceeded.
Well, as I said, somehow we managed to get through customs. The flight was uneventful. In Amsterdam we had a 4.5 hour stopover which gave us enough time to head into the city for a few hours. We did some quick sightseeing (which was much more feasible on that day then it had been on Queens Day when Robin and I were there). We got to see the flower market, the canals, some famous churches, the red light district, the ‘coffee-shop’ street and yeah – just a nice roam before we had to head back to the airport to catch our flight home. 33 hours after leaving our hostel in Jo’ Burg we finally made it home.
Getting home truly makes you appreciate some of daily-life’s little charms. Things such as:
- sleeping in a bed and not being cold
- not needing to pitch a tent to go to bed
- being able to roll over in bed without getting tangled in a sleeping bag
- pressing the button on the electric kettle and having boiled water for tea within a matter of minutes rather than lighting a fire and having to wait for an hour before the water boils
- leaving the dishes on the drying rack to dry or sticking them in a dishwasher rather than needing to flap them over a fire as part of an air-dry procedure
- being able to turn on the warm water tap and have water come out of the tap
- having clean clothes in the closet that you don’t need to smell before deciding to put them on
- needing to decide which shoes to wear before going out
- driving on the right side of the road
- my Mom’s home cooking
The list is much longer – but after having spent six weeks in an orphanage in the middle of a tiny Kenyan village that has rarely seen any white people where there is no running water and sporadic electricity and where everything is cooked over fire and coal, and then after travelling for another six weeks while sleeping every night in a tent and cooking in the same rustic conditions – I have a few-found respect for every little thing back at home. We truly live a good life.
So that’s it. The trip is done. Some more photos have been posted – the rest need to be sorted through and some time, hopefully in the near future, will be put together into another multi-media slideshow.
