Introduction: Taking your family to South Africa?

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What drives one to uproot his family from a safe, reasonable comfortable place with acceptable standard of living and (after quite some time) good circle of friends, to uproot his family and to take them to South Africa, to Johannesburg of all places with its crime infested reputation?

I don't know.

Or, any explanation would end up in a long story, which still would not really convince, I fear. It has something to do with the fact that our former place of residence, Kitzingen, as easy as it is, was maybe a bit to quiet.

But in the end it probably it just has to do with the fact that I, and my wife, have a problem with being stuck too long in one place. Or at least we had it so far, one is getting older and there is always hope that we get wiser one day.

Whatever the reason, it doesn't matter. We made the decission, earned our share of tztztz and head shaking when we told people, moved. Believe me, if you tell people that you move to Johannesburg, they look at you as you were telling them that you decided to join the Jehova Witnesses,  only that that would be at least safe. Johannesburg, the most dangerous city in the world outside a war zone! This is at least what the South Africans that live here pride themselves in. I think that is nonsense, but it is a rough place.

This section of the site is about our travels down here (in photos) and maybe occasionally a little text about our experiences. Nothing too ambitious.

12th of September 2010

Houseboat Tour on the Vaal River

I attempt today to load another picture from one of our trips that we recently did with a houseboat on the Vaal river, south of Johannesburg. Attention: ART ALARM! It is a collage! Huiuiui. Doesn't matter.

We did the trip together with our neighbors (who rented their own boat, because those boats are not exactly the Queen Mary). It was a loads of fun, so much fun actually, that for us this trip was a repeat of exactly the same trip that we did last year.

28th of December 2009

Summer Holiday 2009

Touring through a country is like having a hangover. It's only real fun with small children. As my wife and me like challenges, we don't do the reasonable thing, grab our little prince and relocate with him to an all inclusive, big beach resort with child minders on duty for 24 hours a day. Nope, we pack the car, hit the road and subject ourselves to endless conversations, directed from the back seat, running along the lines of “Why is this car in front of us turning? Why?”, “How much longer?”, “I am HUNGRY!!” etc. The last one always comes within 5 minutes after we left a restaurant where he couldn't possibly eat anything because he was so full.

There are only two things an adult has to its disposal to deal with such a situation. Number one and most importantly, is a portable DVD player. They work wonders, the only question is how many times in a row an adult can listen to the same episode of “Bob the Builder”  before a head on collision at full speed with a tree becomes a viable alternative to continuing the trip. But in general these DVD players work very well. So well actually, that one wonders how the American west could be conquered with horse wagons before the invention of DVDs.

The second item that an adult can use to reduce the terror of such a trip is careful planning. This is where I excel. Before we started the trip I informed my family that they have to face approximately 2000 km of driving for this holiday. As I have a very good sense of geography I didn't consult any map to come up with that number, it was more based on a gutt feel. They tend to be fairly accurate. At the time of this writing we are at the half way point of the total trip, are close to 1900 km and the way back will not be shorter. Ah well, an error margin of 2 then. Nothing that can be done about it now.  (At the end in turns out to be 3787 km)

But, of course, we are not completely stupid. We are not on the road all the time. Our mode of travel these days is more going to a few destinations, stay at each for 3 to 4 nights if possible and then move on to the next.  Going around like this, with longer stays at different places allows us to explore the country on the one hand but to also relax as well.

The main places we stayed were a small beach resort on the Wild Coast called Wavecrest, where we already stayed last year, then on to Nieu-Bethesda and Graaff-Reinet in the Karoo area, a day and a half in Durban and finally to Sani Pass, where we also had a stay last year. More about these places on the different photo pages, that form part of this entry.

21st of December 2009

Happy Christmas!!

I know it is a few days premature, but this way it may give the one or the other the opportunity to make some last minute travel arrangements to an unexpected, but very quiet and peaceful place for the holiday.

My tip for a very quiet and contemplative destination for Christmas is, of all places, Johannesburg. The rest of the year a place of traffic mayhem and chaos, around the end of December everybody is just gone. They all bugger of to Cape Town, the beaches, Durban, whatever. The highways are free, parking lots are deserted, supermarkets empty. There are times where I feel like the sole survivor of a natural disaster which wiped out everyone else. If traffic was always like this, Johannesburg would actually be a pretty good place to live.

One thing though, once you are here, stay put, don’t move. The roads are lethal, literally. Since the beginning of the festive season 600 people were killed on the roads of South Africa.

30th of November 2009

Social Life (with Children) in SA

Social life in SA is very child oriented. I mean if you have children. While in Germany your choice of restaurant with a play area usually leaves you McDonalds, or, if you want it fancier, Burger King, in SA playgounds for children are frequently part of a restaurant's equipment. In some cases this includes trampolins, jungle jims and free video games. They even provide staff to watch -sort of - over the brats while the parents have their dinner. Other places have counter where the little ones can make their own pizza. All these places are usually loud, chaotic, filled by screaming children and their food is more on the down to earth side, rather gourmet style. Still they allow parents to go out to a restaurant meal without feeling out of place. But why people without children do frequent such places (there are alternatives), which they do, beats me.

Another form of socializing with children are kids birthdays. Here it is not a case of dropping of your little angels for a few hours at another house where they wreak havoc on those premises as the supervision regime of the inviting parents is collapsing. No, parents are invited along with the child, plus the sibblings of the child that actually knows the birth kid. As a result, if you invite the whole class of your child to a party you have to rent a place big enough to function as FIFA worldcup stadium, to accomodate the crowd. To ease the pain at least one can drink. No matter at what time the party starts, alcohol is provided and the consumption of it is acceptable at any time.

Because there are so many different events and activities, that children get sucked into down here, weekends sometimes can get hectic. As an example our last weekend:

Saturday 9 - 10: German lesson

Saturday 10:30 - 13:30 Birthday party of classmate

Saturday 14:00 - 15:00 Gymnastics display of our son

Saturday 18:00 - 3:00 Barbecue with the neighbors

Sunday 6:00 - ???        Hangover

Sunday 11:00 - 13:00 Birthday party of friend of Oliver

Sunday 17:30 - 20:00 Christmas party of school class

Please note that I used military style times, as it takes military precission to keep up with that sort of timeplan.

But then I don't want to complaint. We were really lucky with our social life down here and feeling stranded was hardly ever an issue.

Thank god, its Monday. Time to rest, office sleep is the best sleep...

4th of October 2009

Sungubala

A few months ago, we had booked a long weekend away in the northern Drakensberg, at a mountain camp called “Sungubala”. No idea what that means, but there is a pass of the same name. The travel plan was very simple and clear, I would work on the last day before the long weekend until 12, would leave the office, pick up my wife at home, drive on to the German school to pick up our son and finally make our way to the mountains before traffic got to crazy. Like a Swiss clock work this plan. Don't want to make this into a long winded story, but what happened was that I had to call my wife at 11 that day to cancel the plan (I had to give here enough time to get to the German school to pick up our son). All because some events completely out of my control revolving around a thing called “spent grain buffer tank”, which collapsed, more or less, under the biggest lauter tun in Africa. If you have now any clue what I am talking about you must be a brewmaster.

Needless to say, my wife found the explanation also not satisfying and the short notice of the cancellation made me at least as popular as George W. Bush at the yearly meeting of Greenpeace and Amnesty International.

So we went now, in October, springtime, instead of April, the fall. I put the time of the year down in detail because it is something not easy to get used to. 40 plus years in the northern hemisphere clearly left a certain season pattern in my mind and although rationally it is very clear that December is summer and July is winter, I still tend to refer to opposite in casual conversation. Somewhere deep down the reversed seasons still seams to be mind boggling.

The Drakensberg are a paradise for hikers. There are many trails, it is a very rugged, beautiful area and a place where one actually could undertake a several day hike with the luxury of a guide and some porters who will schlepp everything for you. We don't do that. For one we have the perfect excuse that our 5 year old son Oliver is not ready for it yet. He is actually great on day hikes up to 5 hours up and down the mountains, but on the second day he usually goes on a strike which can only be compared to what the miners did in England when Thatcher privatized the industry. If you don't know what I am talking about, watch “Billy Elliot”. The second reason why we don't go on a several day hike is, well,  personal fitness. But lets down dwell on that.

Sungubala Mountain Camp is a rugged little place, mainly consisting of A-frame huts and covered tents. The arangement is dinner, bed and breakfast which is quite common down here, but leaves a certain gap in the meal plan which is usually filled by valuable health foods like chips, cookies, and chocolate. The camp has its own trails, of which we did most. The longest one was 4.5 hours around an horse shoe shaped escarpment two thirds up the mountain around the camp. Great. The next day, due to the strike potential, we kept it to short strolls in the nearby “Royal Natal National Park” to see some rock pools and San rock paintings.

San were a group of people that lived successfully in the area for thousands of years, before they were even more successfully wiped off the surface of the earth by white settlers and possibly other African tribes. But we can still appreciate their paintings, or at least what is left of them. Some of them are said to be 5000 years old, but then they had to make space for so valuable information such as “I was here, Joe 1988”. I am glad Joe, that you made it all the way here. Or people tried to pry the rock of and to take the art home, where it would be much better protected from such vandals such as Joe. Whatever the reason, there is not much there anymore to admire on those sites, that are easily accessible and ours was a mere 20 minutes away from the road. Good sites all require a long hike up to them, so vandals are too tired to do their magic by the time they get to the place or Joe can't be bothered to walk that far in the first place.

Will have to look for a place like that next time we are in the mountains and don't do a big hike on the day before in order to prevent strike.

30th of June 2008

Police Strike

Originally I figured that I should have the next entry in a positive light, writing about the good sides of living in South Africa, and believe me there are many. But recent events prompted me to do otherwise and have this little entry and to postpone my story about the delights of Johannesburg.

Last week the metropolitan police of Johannesburg was on strike. They blocked a highway during rush hour and caused a major traffic jam. That is already somewhat remarkable, as the police in many countries is not allowed to strike and even less to cause such a disruption of public life. But it is getting better.

In response the riot police (which is federal) was sent in to clear the mess. Pretty good story already, federal police in riot gear sent to disperse other police units on strike. But hey, we are in South Africa and it gets even better.

The different police forces started to shoot at each other! Now, there is humour in that, isn't it? Funny enough, the metropolitan police which shot with real ammunition didn't hurt anybody, but the riot police which used rubber bullets injured several metros.

Welcome to South Africa!

25th of May 2008

Violence in SA

Maybe it is best to start this posting with some clarifications. We are still in South Africa, we haven't booked a flight out of the country (at least not yet) and we are not planning to abandon our plans to live here for the next two years. Unless the situation will dictate at some point to do otherwise. But the worldwide media has been full of stories about the outbreak of xenophobic violence in South Africa over the last two weeks and this is in outside view of the events from inside the country.

South Africa has a reputation for being a dangerous and violent place. The recent news at least confirms and even strengthen this image. This level of violence is not ordinary even by local standards. The papers are full of horror stories and the TV probably, too, but we don't have television right now. I scanned the internet and what I read there was enough to make me almost believe that I moved with my family into a civil war zone. The picture is grim and for many reasons adiquate. What happens in the townships is horrendous and hard to comprehend.

But what may be the strangest thing of all is, that the recent events have had no impact on our lives, at least so far. Up to now the violence was limited to the poor areas, we haven't witnessed anything. Hence the outside view from the inside.

The German government gave out a travel warning not to visit townships and the area of downtown Johannesburg anymore. Especially the latter sounds dramatic, but the truth is that center of Johannesburg was a no go zone for many years and only recently it became safe enough to visit it again during the day. It basically slipped back – hopefully only temporarily – to its former status of a bad neighborhood. All major businesses left the area many years ago, most to the northern suburb of Sandton. No one I know ever said that there is a reason to go the city center.

The bottom line is that I don't think our personal risks are right now higher than they were when we came here. Talking to South Africans there seems at this point no reason for us to be more concerned for our personal safety than usual.The affected areas are out of bounds for us anyway, even on a good day. Yes, in quiet times townships can be visited, but for ignorants such as us only with a guide. Obviously, right now that is an activity which I will not pursue. But no matter where you go, one has to be careful (but not paranoid) here .

The life in the areas that we frequent does not differ from our previous stays here. Shops are open and just as busy as before, the restaurants are frequented as if nothing unusual is going on and everybody carries on just as always. It definitely feels like an atmosphere of denial.

It is obvious even to the casual visitor that South Africa is facing huge challanges. On the way between the airport to the city center of Capetown one drives on the highway past one township. What I saw there very well fit my mental image of a slum. Improvised shacks made of srap material like sheets of corrugated iron and plywood closely standing to each other, with billows of smoke from open fires above them. Ironically, there are even power and telephone lines in these areas, stemming from an earlier attempt by the government to improve peoples lifes. But the services had to be turned off shortly after their introduction, because people couldn't pay the bills. Life there must be hard and during the winter season downright miserable. Unemployment is officially around 40%, in reality probably higher. And the jobs that many of the employed have don't really fit a standard job description of a industrialized country. Where ever one goes there is a service person assisting you. Pushing the shopping card back to the supermarket after you are done with it, assisting you while pulling your car out of a parking lot, you can even get it washed right there and then, while shopping. And of course you don't fill the gasoline into your car yourself.

Obviously, all these jobs pay badly. To improve the living situation of those people is a task of major proportions for the government, it makes the problems that their colleagues back in Europe have to face almost tiny. But if the standard of living is not improved for the people at the lower end of society I would imagine that life here could become pretty rough and dangerous for everyone. Then the violence could easily spill out into the better areas as well.

I hope that it will never come to this and that the situation will improve over time. How big the chances are I don't know, but my optimism is limited.

Of course my selfish me hopes at least, that we will be never personally affected in any way by this unrest and violence.