Where Are We???

As I wrote about in the "Out of Africa" post, Cape Town is sooo incredibly different than the Africa I've been traveling through. But then again, just when I'm feeling like I'm back in the states, there will be some random experience that reminds me although there are many more modern comforts here, it's still Africa!

SOME REASONS CAPE TOWN IS NOT LIKE THE REST OF AFRICA:

1. Here you get napkins with meals -- even nice cloth napkins in most restaurants!

2. The roads are solid, smooth pavement -- haven't seen a single pothole!

3. Credit cards are accepted everywhere, and there aren't additional fees for wanting to use them.

4. You can use the water from the bathroom sink to brush your teeth -- no need to have bottled water with you at all times!

5. My U.S. accent is fairly well understood. (In East Africa, I'd often get confused stares, and if I'd repeat myself with an attempt at a British accent, I'd have a much better chance of being understood b/c they all speak British English!)

6. Every kind of U.S. store and brand is here -- from the malls to the grocery stores!

7. The white people I met living in East Africa seemed to be expats who either worked with their government (military, foreign service posts, etc.), or with an NGO or other aid-related org. Cape Town is truly a mixed society, and given the beauty of this place, I can understand why the Dutch and British settlers never left! (Much of South Africa has great diversity, and Joberg was also very diverse, but not so much in Zimbabwe or East Africa.)


SOME REMINDERS CAPE TOWN IS STILL AFRICA:

1. I still walk on the wrong side of the sidewalk in pedestrian traffic, and look to the wrong side of the street before crossing. (but this isn't just my problem in Africa, but all countries where cars drive on the left side!)

2. Our waiter at breakfast the other morning was also eager to know if we had any laundry we needed done, b/c he'd take the clothes home, wash & return them to us the next day for a small fee (much cheaper than the hotel's laundry charges).

3. Wildlife encounters -- yesterday we visited Boulder's Beach and had close encounters with penguins who have to be the cutest, funniest little things on the planet! So great to watch them waddle and hop! The colony of penguins arrived there in the 1980s, and no one knows where they came from or how long they'll stay!

4. The curse of "just now" still gets you here in Cape Town! "Just now" is something you never want to hear because it means you're going to be waiting for a while! As when we were awaiting delivery of our rental car the other morning, and they said it'd be coming to us "just now." After another 90 minutes of waiting around our hotel room we called back and cancelled the car for that day!

5. We've had the occasional sub-par tour experience, my favorite being the other day at the oldest building in Cape Town, the fort that the Dutch East India Company built for the Cape's first Dutch settlers. The tour was packed - tons of families. Our first stop was a torture chamber where the guide proceeded to talk about how folks would be suffocated to death, and how the walls are covered with scratch marks where prisoners had tried to claw their way out. Then he said with a group our size, we'd die within 10 minutes if he locked us in. Then, he turned out the light and left, closing the door behind him! Every little child on the tour immediately started screaming & crying at the top of their lungs, even many adults were in a panic, running toward the door, etc. It was so ridiculously unnecessary we couldn't do anything but laugh. The second stop was another torture chamber, and some of the little kids didn't even want to go inside. I felt so sorry for this one little boy inparticular, whose parents didn't seem to get that he was being scarred for life, and just drug him into the next room where the tour guide actually acted out and described in detail the horrific torture methods. We didn't continue on to the third stop on that tour! :)

6. Slow jams! The popularity of sappy old love songs, and Celine Dion in particular, has been consistent all over the continent!

7. But the real way to tell you're still in Africa, is simply to look up at the big beautiful sky! It's just as majestic down here!

Mere