rezendi

Ah, South Africa, a nation whose motto should be "Where, Unlike The Rest Of The Continent, Things Basically Work."

I've worked with several people who previously worked in Johannesburg (aside to rdi: I refer of course to Wayne and the Crazy Romanians. Which would be a pretty good band name) and told fearsome stories of it. It's still a high-crime city of walls, electric fences, burglar bars and security signs; certain of its suburbs are still considered tourist no-go areas, and I'd still be very reluctant to walk around here at night; but I think the war-zone days are pretty much over.

Rarely has a city been so dedicated to Mammon. Literally built on gold mines - the city's dominant topographical features are the ore heaps that remain - it's now the commercial and financial center of Africa, and source of fully one-third of South Africa's GDP. (eta: believe-it-or-not statistic of the day; forty per cent of all the gold in the world was mined in Johannesburg.)


A few glimpses:

Parkview. In this pleasant northern suburb, just a few blocks from the my relatives' house (it turns out my relatives are supercool and I'd rather stay with them than in the Burj al-Arab), I go for a run around extremely pretty (if toxically polluted) Zoo Lake, past sculptures and cafes, and past small groups and couples of wealthy people, white and black and Asian in roughly equal numbers, young and old, some out for a stroll, some carrying shopping bags from the nearby gargantuan Rosebank mall. I also pass occasional groups of domestic workers heading home for the day, all of them black. The latter smile at me and wish me a good day; the former ignore me.

Central Business District. I advance with some trepidation into the ill-reputed streets of downtown Johannesburg, keeping a wary eye out. I quickly realize that despite its rep, I stand virtually no chance of being mugged here, at least by day: mugging someone in these thronging, hustling crowds would be a physical feat worthy of the Shanghai Opera. I quickly grow to really like the area. It's surely the mercantile capital of Africa, big stores in the big buildings that go on for a kilometre in every direction, row upon row of sidewalk stalls and hawkers on the actual streets, between them selling everything under the sun. Hundreds of minibus taxis, and thousands of cars, zoom up and down the streets. It's like a combination of New York and Mumbai: messy and dirty and sketchy, but oh so lively and colourful.

Melville. Another northern suburb, this one hip and trendy, full of cafes and bars and galleries. I sit on the ground, my back to the wall of a strip mall, waiting for a taxi to arrive. I am carrying a newspaper whose cover headlines include "Another great week for the waBenzi" (those being South Africa's newly wealthy black yuppies, "people of the Mercedes Benz"). A woman approaches the car in front of me, a young beautiful black woman whose appearance, between (fashionably short, teased to an inch of its life) hair and clothes and jewellery, probably cost five figures. In US dollars. The driver, a Hollywood-handsome black man in Ray-Bans, opens the door for her. My eyes drift down below the car's BMW logo to its license plate: "ONELOVE". I chuckle and look up. The driver catches my eye, holds up a finger to say "wait a moment", and reaches for the radio. Moments later, the opening strains of "Exodus" - my favourite Bob Marley song - begin to blare out from the car's advanced sound system. I laugh. As they pull away, the woman giggles and waves goodbye.

Soweto. About halfway through my tour of Soweto I realize why I'm so disappointed. Five or ten years ago, this vast township might have been another world; now, though, it's become so developed and integrated that it's just a visit to a very large, poorer-than-average suburb. Everyone here is black, mind you, but I've gotten so used to that over the last couple months I no longer notice. New construction is everywhere. There are a few slums as squalid as anything I've seen in Africa, but compared to, say, Nairobi, it's downright pleasant.


I got my travel pix developed. As usual, they're mostly mediocre, and there's one classic of Victoria Falls obscured by a feature we'll call The Great Thumb, but there are a few decent landscape shots. I can't be bothered to shrink them to web size, so you'll just have to suffer the bandwidth. Still miffed I lost all my Kenya shots, but hey.



Rwanda, taken from a bus winding its way up a mountain road to Ruhengeri. I waited for a break in the vegetation, snapped the picture, and received a brief burst of applause from the rest of the bus, who had been watching to see if I would time the shot correctly. I guess I got it right.



Antelope, Queen Elizabeth National Park, Uganda.


Storm and road approaching Bwindi Impenetrable Forest.


Bwindi detail.


Parc National des Volcans.


(fights obvious caption) (loses) "Beauty and the Beast."


I swear, I took some shots of the gorillas that did not involve the Belgian model/TV hostess. I must have, right? I gotta have one around here somewhere... (eta: whoops, uploaded the wrong picture here, ruining the already-laboured joke. Never mind.)


See? (eta: and I could have at least edited my fingertip out of this shot.)




Look, I like volcanoes, OK?


Here's another. Goma's lava flow, and its source.


Yours truly amid the lava rubble. Taken by a UN peacekeeper, I think. No, wait, a taxi driver. As you can see, I am wearing my much-practiced "someone just dropped a brick on my skull from a nontrivial height" expression.


Lake Kivu.


Dhows off Zanzibar at sunset.


Tanzania seen from Tazara train.


The dry Zambezi.


The considerably less dry Zambezi.


Malindzidzi, Matopos, Zimbabwe.


The Vumba, Eastern Highlands, Zimbabwe.


Giraffe and sable.





Incidentally, all you South African readers (aside to whythawk: this means you), my cell # here is 084 807 1061.