African Journal: Our first visit to South Africa since my arrival

[thatcrazycajun]

So the Songbird and I finally got a car last week. Having disposed of her 1998 Honda Civic on the way out of Atlanta, we arrived back here mostly needing a driver even to buy groceries until we could purchase a vehicle of our own. Luckily, another US Embassy employee and his wife, who are retiring and thus leaving Swaziland for good, were willing to not only sell us their used Honda CR-V, but give us a pretty decent deal on it.

Once they finally didn't need the vehicle anymore (last Wednesday), they turned it over to us (SB having paid for it and obtained the necessary paperwork for us to register it in her name) and we confirmed that insurance still on it would cover us out of the country until we could actually buy a new policy (that has to wait until the registration process is complete, hopefully before Thursday which is 1 August and ends the current one). Then we got up early on Saturday thinking we'd drop off our recycling at the Embassy and a spare set of keys to SB's boss so he could look in on the cats while we were gone, then tootle off to Nelspruit, a largish South African town about a three-hour drive north of us.

Well, the recycling drop took far longer than anticipated (mainly due to my own lack of organization) and we ended up not leaving Mbabane until well after 11 AM. Fortunately, traffic was light at the Swazi/RSA border station and we whizzed through both countries' customs offices and headed out into the lowveld. SB navigated while I drove, as we have still not yet obtained our GPS device (another real necessity in African driving). We arrived in Nelspruit about 2:15 pm, had lunch and visited Riverside Centre, one of the two shopping malls there to get the lay of the land. We then drove to the bed-and-breakfast where SB had reserved a room for us to check in so as not to risk losing our room by arriving after the movie we planned to see.

Going back to Riverside Centre, we caught Despicable Me 2 after a quick dinner (capsule review: even more Minion zaniness than the first movie and a love interest for Gru made it well worth the money) and returned to the B&B to turn in for the night. (If you're American and ever find yourself having to drive after dark in any sub-Saharan nation outside of large cities - and even in them, some spots - take my advice: Don't. No, really, seriously, just don't...at least not unless you have serious night vision, a vehicle with good headlights and a Green Lantern-like lack of fear—none of which Your Humble happens to possess; more on this below.)

Sunday morning early, we checked out of the B&B and drove up to White River (Witrivier in Afrikaans), an even smaller town nearby, and visited a small shopping center where SB made a new friend in the owner of a candle shop, a very nice lady who offered to put SB in touch with people for crafts classes and stuff. We also found a grocer selling clementines, which we'd not yet seen in Swaziland, for about $3 US a box, or less than half what they usually cost Stateside (we got two boxes). Then we went to the other big shopping mall in Nelspruit, I'langa Mall, and picked up some other stuff that is either unobtainium or hideously expensive in Swaziland, then had a lovely brunch al fresco at a bistro called Cappucino's on the mall's open-to-the-sky upper level.

Returning to Riverside, we saw The Wolverine in 3-D, Hugh Jackman's fifth outing as Marvel Comics' far-and-away most popular mutant character, this time in a film re-imagining the original Uncanny X-Men comic book's Mariko Yashida/Silver Samurai storyline set in Japan from the 1980s—and setting up next year's scheduled X-Men: Days of Future Past summer tentpole. We enjoyed it even though we had arrived about 5-10 minutes in...and I still want to know how in the sainted name of Ray Harryhausen they pulled off that scene where Logan/Wolverine and a couple of assassins fight and bounce around atop Tokyo's famous bullet train—while it's barreling through the city at full speed! We then bought some groceries at a supermarket in the mall (one of two) and visited a storefront that had been turned over to an exhibit honoring South Africa's most revered figure, Nelson Mandela, on the occasion of his 95th birthday and recent hospitalization. The walls were covered with handwritten birthday and get-well wishes from visitors to "Tata" ("Grandfather" in Swahili) or "Madiba" (Mandela's clan name, by which he is entitled to be addressed as the eldest member of the clan), and SB and I added our own and perused the photos and historical text displays before finally realizing it was 3:30 PM and we needed to haul ass back to the border if we hoped to get there before sundown.

Of course, we didn't; it got full dark a half-hour before we neared the border station at Oshoek (the only one of Swaziland's several entry posts that's open in the evening on Sundays), and after a lot of white-knuckle driving on pitch-black two-lane roads in the middle of freaking nowhere, with cars coming at me from the opposite direction at better than 80 KPH and all but blinding me to the road markings with their headlights, we managed to get there and parked. Then when we did get to the customs station, we found about three combies' worth of people had arrived at the same time and had to fight our way past about two dozen of them to the diplomatic passport window. Happily, we got through relatively quickly and got our stamps to re-enter, then drove a blessedly mostly-lit, divided highway the remaining 38 km back to Mbabane. Pictures were taken and will be uploaded shortly; for now, we are just relieved to have gotten back safely.

Comments

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you guys are doin' OK and survived the driving! But you did the rare thing: sending me to look up a word.

combie:
A rusty beat up van at least 20 years old, about to fall apart, and in desperate need of a new paint job, new brakes, and new transmission. Popular transportation for hipsters who are in search of an eternal "prize" buzz with no desire to enter the workforce.
—UrbanDictionary

Definition: Voltz Wagon car. Note: Usually utilised by travellers cruzing the East Coast of Aussie..
Google "define", from somebody fannish with an Elvish feminine LJID and a post of "Aussie Slang"

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

Never thought I'd add to YOUR vocabulary! Combies are the equivalent of Kenya's matatus, i.e., the only method of public transit in Swaziland for people on the bottom rung of the economic ladder (which is to say, most people in the country). They are microbuses usually white in color, designed to fit 6-8 people and usually carrying half again that number, and driven in such reckless fashion as to make NYC cabbies look positively sedate; combie accidents are common and sometimes result in deaths, for which reason US mission personnel and their families are officially advised against riding in them. They also have very unusual names painted on them; my personal fave was the one named "Sudden Death." (It may be intended as reverse sympathetic magic to stave off collisions.)

[lemmozine.livejournal.com]

Sounds very interesting. When some friends of mine visited S.A. (don't ask me what part) they brought back some really cool cheap African musical toys. Stuff that would be great for something like, say, an Interfilk auction, or just to have fun with. Mostly percussion and flutes.

[hillarysherwood.livejournal.com]

Glad that you got home safely. Sounds like the interesting trip made up for the white knuckle driving at the end.

Right-Hand drive

[sodyera.livejournal.com]

Get a little chachka that interests you and station it on the Left side of the dashboard, within sight but not obstructing your view. You need to be on the left side of the road anyway, and so you will always be cued to glance toward the left for that interesting thing. Little tricks like pretending you're in a mirror universe, and always looking left before looking right will slowly get you used to it.

Here, you're having a wonderful adventure and I can't help but ask dumb infrastructure questions: What colour are your license plates? What year is the Honda? What do your electric plugs look like? Can you use any electronics you brought with you or do you have to buy local ones? Nerd stuff.

Re: Right-Hand drive

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

Answers more or less in order:
- Thank you for the tchotchke suggestion; it may be worth considering if I can find something interesting enough to attract my view more than once or twice.
- The license plates here are generally similar to those in the UK/Europe (long and narrow horizontal bars, as opposed to the taller rectangles we have in the US). On newer ones, the interior has either scenic illustration or gradated color inside the white border; older plates are plain solid white or orange mostly.
- The electric plugs are three-pronged, but the prongs are much larger and more cylindrical than the flat blades US plugs have (about 1/4" in diameter). We can use some of our electrical gizmos with small grey plug adapters; others do not have built-in step-down conversion and require a large voltage regulator (about the size of a shoebox), such as small appliances. South African plugs are similar to the ones here, but smaller.
- The Honda CR-V is a white 2000 model with a few minor dings and extra mirrors in some very odd places (one is on the left side of the hood, another over the rear window).

Re: Right-Hand drive

[sodyera.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

Re: Right-Hand drive

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

You're entirely welcome. FYI, our new acquisition pretty much resembles the "First Generation" photos of the white Aussie Honda CR-V shown on Wikipedia (see here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_CR-V#First_generation_.281995.E2.80.932001.29)), except without the spare-tire cover on the back (our spare resides under the floorboard of the boot, and the seller was kind enough to throw in two more spares in decent shape, which we keep in our garage).

Re: Right-Hand drive

[sodyera.livejournal.com]

There are a lot of them out there, generally in good condition. Has it told you its name?

Re: Right-Hand drive

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

No, it hasn't told us its name yet, assuming it has one. Neither Songbird nor I are in the habit of anthropomorphizing our transportation to such a degree...but it's early days yet; you never know. :-) She used to refer to a previous car (her old teal-green '92 Civic, which she owned when I first met her) as "my little pregnant roller-skate," but that's it so far as I am aware.