Freedom

Today it's Freedom Day. It's celebrated on the day the first democratic elections were held in SA in 1994. I think it's a great reason for a holiday. When I think back of '94 with those long lines of people waiting to cast their votes for the first time in their life, I get the shivers. So impressive, such a great moment.
South-Africa isn't just free for the South-Africans themselves, to a lot of other people it means freedom too. Two days ago we went into town, because we had something to celebrate. The waitress we had, spoke with a beautiful french accent. It turned out she was from the Congo. "Things are bad there", she explained herself. She and her sister managed to get to South-Africa. The rest of her family was still there. The thought of them made her look sad.
After dinner we went to our car, where we were approached by a man. He asked, no begged, if we would listen to him. He explained he was a refugee from Sudan and needed money to get to Plettenberg Bay, where his brother was staying. He showed us the piece of paper with the directions and the money he had saved up until now. It was 40 rand and he needed 85 rand for the taxibus. He started crying. He lost all his family in the war in Sudan and was breaking down in front of our eyes. He hadn't eaten the whole day because he was saving his money for the bus. We helped him out. There are a lot of beggars in SA, but a grown man crying for money is an uncommon and awful sight. I feel bad at having even the slightest doubt about his story. I so hope he got on that taxibus and is ok now.

I miss

Things I miss from the Netherlands:


- Riding my bicycle to a bar where my friends are waiting for me
- Hidden poverty
- All the good fried food: chips with mayonaise, frikadellen, kaassoufflees and those little bami and nasi-thingies you get at parties
- Going to the market to browse and buy some fruit
- Running next to the river Amstel (in Amsterdam)
- Visiting my mother on an impulse
- Going to a park
- The cold air when winter is coming
- The newspapers (compared to the ones here, they're not as bad as the Dutch think)
- Cheap cable television
- The low fat chicken wraps from the Burger King
- Visiting a friend's home, just to end up drinking wine on the couch and making comments about everything and everyone
- The Hennes&Mauritz and Vero Moda shops
- Talking about politics and making jokes about the politicians (and everyone knows where you talking about)
- Big bags of M&Ms
- The columns of Jan Blokker

Bakkies

A bakkie is a pick-up truck and South-Africans love them. They carry around anything in them, even people. Not just on dirt roads in the country side, also on the high way where cars do a 150 km/h. The first time I saw that and cried out: "oh no, look at that, it's so dangerous! They can't do that". At that time, I was still used to Dutch standards and the Dutch way of upholding the law. In Holland it would never fly and the driver would have been pulled over by the police in 5 minutes. Now I'm used to this. A lot of it has to do with money. In Holland it's safety first. In South-Africa safety gets compromised because of money, work, labour. I.e. a lot of employers drive around their workers in a bakkie. For them it's too expensive to get safe transportation for their workers and the employees themselves have no money for their own cars. I've seen bakkies with up to 25 people in the back! Of course the people in the back are never white (except a few kids who are fooling around). Sometimes you can even see a white driver with an empty passenger seat next to him and 6 people in the back.

Winter's coming

Camps Bay, wednesday 19th april, 16.00u

It's getting winter here. I told myself to take full advantage of the last sunny days. So that's what I've been doing for the last three weeks. Because as it turns out, the step from summer to autumn/winter isn't as clean cut here as it is in Holland. In the Netherlands you praise the lord for every nice day after September 15th. Here you don't have be stressed about missing the last nice day, because after that there's another and another and another. Today it was 25 degrees. A fine beach day as you can see. 25 degrees in Holland is almost a heat wave! I wonder how much more days there will be when I rush to the beach because I don't want to miss out on the last hot one of the season.

Millionaires

Half of Africa's 75.000 millionaires* live in South-Africa. And they show it. It would take me over a year to see the number of expensive cars in the Netherlands that I see in Camps Bay on one afternoon. In a way, that's weird because Holland is a very rich country, but people don't seem to show off their wealth like they do here. It's rather normal seeing a Lamborghini or Ferrari on a Friday afternoon cruising around the Camps Bay boulevard. Porsches, BMW's and the latest Mercedes are standard issue of course.

The houses are no pieces of cake either. Every day I pass these beautiful apartment buildings with views to die for and I imaging myself living on one of it's floors. But then my boyfriend helps me out of my dream "It's one house, not a block of apartments". Not that it makes that much of a difference, I wouldn't be able to afford it either way.


* in case you are wondering...yes, dollar millionaires, not rands, but dollars.

Beachboy

Zuluboy

What would SA be like without Jacob Zuma? A lot more boring that's for sure. The rape trial against him is starting to resemble a Hollywood picture (a bad one though). Remember he is charged with raping a HIV-positive family friend? Last week he appeared in court to testify and some of the stuff he said is so amazing, that I can't keep it from you.

Remember, while you're reading, that Zuma was the head of the National Aids Council of SA, the country in the world with the most HIV-positive people in the world

- He knew she wanted sex, because although she was wearing a skirt, she had her legs crossed in stead of neatly next to each other.
- After the sex/rape he took a shower to lower his chance of getting infected
- He couldn't refuse the woman sex even if she's positive. It's against his Zulu upbringing to deny sex to a woman who is aroused.
- There were no condoms, but he did have sex anyway because he was head of the Aids Council he knew the risks for a negative guy having unsafe sex with a positive woman and they were small enough.

I really don't know if I whether to laugh or cry. The damage he's doing with the stuff he's saying is huge. Zuma is a hero to a lot of people.

I have seen Rutger Hauer!!!

Hihi, it was in a bar in the V&A waterfront on saturday. I wanted to go over to him and kiss his feet, but something stopped me. Pride maybe? Never really thougt I had a lot of that, to tell you the truth. Anyway, he's in town to shoot a movie. That happens quite often in Cape Town. Everywhere you go is either a film of photo shoot going on. It's relatively cheap to do that here plus there are mountains, beaches, rivers, lakes, vineyards. In short, it's not only my dream, but also that of a director.

PS. I am not sure if I want people who don't know who Rutger Hauer is, to read this weblog to begin with, but just to be complete; RH is a Dutch actor who plays in Hollywood-stuff like Sin City, Batmans Begins, Blade Runner and Blind Fury.

A Metropolis of 3 million people on Sunday

Big, bigger, biggest

South-Africa has a shopping mall culture. The malls are immense. You can spend days there without seeing the same shop twice. For people from the States this isn't something new, but for me as a Dutch girl it's quite an experience going there. The biggest malls in Holland consist of one shoe store, three clothing stores, a supermarket, a bakery and a butcher. Not here though...It starts when you arrive in your car and have to choose one of many entrances to the parking garage. If you choose poorly it means one or two kilometres of walking before you get past the supermarket and foodcourt to the nice little stores. I found this out the hard way. After you park, you MUST remember the number of the space you parked in, i.e. Dolphin D2 or Elephant W25. If you don't you will get lost and end up walking around for 30 minutes trying to find your car. I also found this out the hard way. Then in the elevator up to the stores. When get out of the elevator remember the stores around you, otherwise you will never find that particular elevator ever again. Guess how I found this out.
Then shop till you litterally drop. Make sure you wear comfy shoes and comfy clothes. If you want something cheap and basic go to Edgars, Truworths or Woolworths. Older women go to Milady's or Donna Claire. Young women go to Foschini or Queens Park. Guys (older and younger) go to the Cape Union Mart, Stuttafords or Truworths Man. All of these shops you will find in almost every mall in SA. The lack of variation sometimes is annoying.
SA people are like people in the rest of the world, which means that you see a lot of bored men waiting for their women outside the shops. In one mall I saw a special corner for these men, with leather couches and a big tv playing sports.
After the shopping you want a drink. You can choose between a Mugg and Bean, a Nino's or all the fastfood chains you can see in the picture on top of this post. It's the foodcourt in Canal Walk in Cape Town. It is huge. I think 500 people can sit there at once.
Sometimes it's nice and entertaining going to a mall, but I definitely prefer the sidewalk cafe's and little shops in Cape Towns Long street. Going by car to a mall and seeing no daylight at all seems like a waste in country with a climate like SA's. But I understand that it's safe, it's efficient and the only way, because a lot of cities in SA don't have an old city centre like a lot of cities in Europe do.