Well my faithful long suffering readers, this is it, my penultimate chance to assault your eyes!
Durban or Durbs on sea as the locals call it was far more integrated than Cape town from what i could see with Africans, whites and the largest Indian population outside India all living in .....well not exactly harmony but together anyway!! I didn't expect to like Durban from what others had told me but i actually preferred it to Cape town for many reasons, one of which is the climate, it is sub tropical here and even in winter you can go swimming in the warm Indian ocean (which i did today) and enjoy days of 28c on the nice plentiful beaches! Don't get me wrong, you are still told here not to walk alone after dark, properties everywhere still have the electrified fencing and big gates and being lost in the town centre twice made me the only white there and i was made to feel a little unwelcome by some especially those who are part of the 40% unemployed and obviously have a lot of resentment towards anyone better off. But overall i liked the feel of Durban.
The hostel i went to first of all was almost empty and to say it was dirty was an understatement, the dorms smelt bad and had 70's shag pile concert with suspect sticky patches and stains on, oh yuk!! I moved to the Hippo Hide lodge which was much nicer tho up a steep hill which in a perverse way i chose in order to walk up daily in the hope of shifting some of the extra blubber i've put on while away (south american ice creams, thankyou very much!!)! I went to a Zulu village yesterday in an area called 1000 hills with a group from my hostel and wheh we were met by the zulu guide who was gonna take us around, it was blatently obvious he was one of the many who rely on funny fags to get thro life here as he was glazed over with half lidded eyes..........it seems endemic here!
It did floor me to hear funky house music wafting out of one of the huts......i had the urge to pay to get in and ask for a beer but i just caught myself in time ha ha! Anyway, our zoned out guide took us around to the nursery school to ooh and ahh at the cute little kids, then to the river where he explained the long winded rules of courtship, took 3 years it seems just to ask someone for a date.....blow that for a game of soldiers, at that rate you wouldn't be ready to have kids till your 80yrs old!!!!!! We then saw the healer who, with her assistant, put on a show worthy of Bollywood with lots of chanting,mumbling and dancing with mysterious whistling noises claiming to be the ancestors trying to contact us tho i think the assistant was doing it with a gadget in her mouth! Still it was great fun to watch and she was larger than life so she could get away with it as she is held in awe by the village and actually works alongside the conventional medical clinic with agreement of the goverment to recognise her power over the people.
During this visit i was talking to another guide and its shocking the ignorance re HIV here, they honestly believe you can just take a herb or go to the healer to cure you of it and even more shockingly there was a trial of a well known politician here thats just finished who was accused of
forcefully being intimate (i cant say the word it will bounce the mail!) with an HIV + girl and during his trial he said he took a shower to wash off the virus after...........and this is an educated man!!!!!!!!!,its not surprising then that 1 in 3 people here are infected!! The local people just
don't seem to want to believe the facts even tho they are told, they rely on the old ways despite everything and of course multiple wives for the men just spread it quicker......naturally its the kids who are the real victims :-(
Despite all that however, it can't be denied that there is a great sense of community in these villages and all familes live together and everyone pitches in (well, the women anyway), the kids seem really happy and everyone is surrounded by familes and neighbours all the time...it makes you realise just how we have lost that family unity & sense of belonging in our ioslated, stressful western lives.
Anyway on a lighter note, after the kids danced for us which was really fantastic as they were so enthusiastic and eager to please and looked soinnocent & vulnerable in their ragged clothes (i wanted to take them allhome!), we waited to be picked up in the minivan and walked down the road towards its direction when round a corner we stumbled on the sight of the van firmly embedded in the mud on a steep grassy bank and ditch after swerving off the road to miss another speeding van going the other way! The whole village had turned out in a nanosecond to enjoy the spectacle (in fact i'm surprised they hadn't whipped up a picnic!) and lots of men incl the driver, were stood around talking and pointing but actually doing nothing (how typical!). It was so funny to watch especially as an extremely large woman with a chest so huge, she could have been mistaken for a mountain range, was shouting at the driver as she told him off for driving too fast....the fact that they all do, as she was in the other van, seemed lost on her!
It took us the passengers to come up with a cunning plan to get the van off the bank with a lot of pushing, rocking and lifting accompanied by some reversing with instructions........there were big cheers when we all got it on level ground again even tho it was in a sorry state with bits missing
incl an air filter of some sort that just appeared from under it along with various bits and pieces, mind you, it didn't seem to bother the driver as he just threw them in the window and told us to climb in, i felt compelled to check underneath first to make sure there wasn't any brake fluid or oil running out as i didn't fancy getting creamed at the first bend!
So now that i am leaving south africa i would advise anyone thinking of coming here to firstly come with a friend of a group as it is hard to deal with the restrictions of being alone regarding personal safety here, especially as a female, and secondly, a hire car is the only way to go as
the transport is very limited and so will you be without one! My impression of south africa is that the scenery and climate are great with variation and many unspoiled areas, and it has so much potential and richness, but the crime & threat of violence is the blot on the landscape so it can only be hoped that one day the various cultures that live here will have found some common ground and found a solution to the crime rate thro education and more integration in future generations.
So finally its all over, its hard to believe i have finished my journey, in some ways it seems like a lifetime ago i went to Canada with Claire last summer, on the other hand it seems like yesterday, but 32 flights, 13 countries later here i am, at the end with some fab memories, some new
experiences, new body endurance records broken, trashed clothes, lots of wonderful new friends from all corners of the world and most importantly of all, absolutely NO REGRETS.......:-))
See you all soon!
Dun roaming
xxx
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