Warthog Kidney

Becoming a rail commuting civil servant (again)

2012-02-04T17:23:00.000+02:00

So this week I started a new job as a civil servant. I was one for the first 10 years of my professional life - 13 years if you count the army and my internship, which I guess you should - and then I worked in academia and for an NGO for another 11+ years. And from that you can probably work out that I am round about 50. In time I shall likely write a blog or two on the job itself, but suffice to say at this stage that I am reeling from the culture shock and having to adjust to what appears to be an extremely inflexible, intolerant and dehumanising environment. Perhaps if I had never left I wouldn't find it strange - but nearly a dozen years of doing things differently has made it difficult. Anyway, enough of that for now. Early days. Maybe they are having as much trouble adjusting to me as I am to them.

What I thought I would write about is some of the other aspects of this change. Bear with me.

My new office is in the centre of Cape Town, quite close to the central railway station. Road traffic into and parking within the CBD is a nightmare. If you can get parking, it is expensive. Years ago (12 to be exact), I used to take the train. I generally got the 6.30 out of Fish Hoek, which was an "express", as I recall - missing out a good few stations along the way, and taking just 50 minutes to get to Cape Town station. The monthly ticket for "Metro Plus" (1st class), cost about R230 I remember. That allowed one to use the train as many times a day as one needed to, get on get off, and so on. No question about it, the cheapest way to travel. Once in a while there would be glitches - trains not arriving, or just stopping in-between two stations for minutes on end, no explanations given, but these occurrences were fairly infrequent.

My first pleasant surprise was when I went along to my local station last Saturday to buy a ticket for the month of February. MetroPlus Fish Hoek - Cape Town monthly. Guess what? R240! I couldn't believe my ears. I asked the lady who sold it to me what time the earliest train was. "Oh," she said, "they start around 4.30!" I explained that I had somewhere around 6 in mind and she advised me that I would probably be best getting the 6.10. The next thing that happened was that I read an article in our local magazine, the Full Circle, about Metrorail. It was by Colin Jones, who I think used to be the Dean of St George's Cathedral. It appears he now lives in Lakeside and commutes daily to Woodstock. It made for depressing reading - clearly he was not enjoying being a rail commuter. But being of Scottish descent, I was not about to waste my R240 ticket so resolved to give it a try anyway.

I have had to adjust my waking hours. On my first day I was awake at 5 and out the door by 5.45. I don't think herself knew what had hit her. She offered me a lift to the station, but as it is only 1km (exactly - I measured it) and it wasn't raining, I said I would walk. I activated Endomondo (got to get all the mileage I can out of this) and then an audiobook through the Blackberry headset, and set off at what I thought was a respectable pace. My train was waiting for me, pulled up alongside platform 3 - I think it may in fact park there overnight. I found the three MetroPlus carriages - they are always the ones closer to Cape Town and got onto the second from the front. There was only one other person on board. I found a seat as far from the door as I could, close to a window and settled down - put on my specs, checked emails on the Blackberry, wrote one or two, and then got out my book, which currently happens to be one on the Crusades, by Karen Armstrong, called "Holy War". At 6.10 there was the sound of a whistle, a jolt or two and we slowly trundled out of the station headed northwards.

The first 5km of the trip takes you along the False Bay coast. The railway track runs between the Main Road and the sea, and it really is glorious. Unfortunately, the windows are so scratched or so dirty that it is difficult to see anything - I think they replaced all the old glass ones with perspex or plastic because of the vandalism. But on a good day you can open them a little and still see the blue waters and the rocks and, best of all, smell the sea. The trains could best be described as grimy and run down. I don't know how often they are washed or cleaned, but to me they don't look well cared for. Doubtless Metrorail would say they don't have the money or the staff, or they might argue that there is no point when the trains are constantly being vandalized - which is sad.

The trip takes 60 minutes, barring stoppages, which means one is doing an average of about 35 kph. Not exactly burning up the tracks, but if you took a car it would take as long or longer. The advantage of the train is that it is a lot cheaper, that you can read for an hour, and that it is definitely greener. As you get to Steenberg, Retreat, Plumstead and Wynberg, the train fills up. Soon there are no seats to be had, and often very little standing space.I suspect that my father, in the same situation, would have offered his seat to the first woman he saw standing. I am afraid I don't - not unless she is old or pregnant. I find it very difficult to read standing up, and I am taking the train so that I can read. QED. Go figure.

At the Cape Town end it is mild mayhem. In the bad old days there were two exits from the platform - on the West side was the exit for Europeans and on the East side for non-Europeans. They were entirely separate, in line with the apartheid philosophy. Nearly everyone was happy to see the end of that. Now we have one exit - the East exit is closed. So everyone bundles out and then careens along to try and get out first, bumping into people selling ticket holders, cokes, chips, passengers waiting to get on, security officials - the human wave just washes right over them. You can hang back for a while and it becomes a little more civilized - if you have time. Once you are through the ticket check and across the great concourse (which itself is an education - a bit like driving across the main road in the middle of Maputo - go one space, stop, go one space, stop ...), you get out into a large courtyard which borders Adderley Street and from there it is relatively free flowing. Cape Town pedestrians are of course famous for never obeying any traffic lights or traffic signs - in fact it is probably true to say that in the CBD pedestrians rule and motorists simply have to make a plan. I have never seen a pedestrian fined - where would they start?

I survived my first day. At four o'clock sharp the entire office simply emptied, which was an odd feeling. I remember this being a problem from my previous stint as a civil servant. I used to work on the 22nd floor of a building in Dorp Street. There were, as I recall, 6 lifts on each side of the building, 24 floors, and I don't know how many hundred civil servants working there. The majority of them left work at 4 sharp. The result was that if you were in the top half of the building, the lift never came, and you ended up taking the stairs - down 22 floors. Fortunately the reverse did not apply in the mornings. Anyway, at 4.30 I looked around and could not see a soul in the whole place. I very nearly could not get out, but eventually figured it out. Imagine having to spend the night in a government office!

Back at the station I found a train and a seat - the advantages of getting on at the terminus - and performed my ritual with the Blackberry and the book. The carriage filled up and soon we were on our way. This time our journey was enlivened by the musical talents of a blind person and her guide - they wandered up and down the carriage singing Jesus songs - the kind one sang in Sunday School all those years ago. In tune, quite nice harmonies, but I knew I didn't have any change in my wallet, and even if I did was not too keen to take it out of my bag. We haven't had any itinerant preachers yet - I recall them being rather trying. Talk about a captive audience. There are always the earphones if it gets unbearable.

So the reverse journey progressed and little by little the train disgorged its load, whilst picking up one or two extras here and there. The names all came back - Woodstock, Salt River, Observatory, Mowbray, Rosebank, Robdebosch, Newlands, Claremont, Harfield Road, Kenilworth, Wynberg, Wittebome, Plumstead ... I remembered them not only from those years as a civil servant but from my days as a medical student. It is summer right now and quite hot most days, although the south easter does cool things down. The trains are not air-conditioned and the only cooling option available is opening the windows. What is interesting, and quite pleasant, is the way the temperature gradually drops as one goes south, until by the time you get to Muizenberg you are starting to feel more comfortable - and of course there is that wonderful whiff of the sea again. Of course, it is helped by the fact that the trains empties, but it isn't only that - there is definitely as gradient. Retreat, Steenberg, Lakeside, False Bay, Muizenberg, St James, Kalk Bay, Clovelly ... we round the last corner with a screech of metal and Fish Hoek station is in sight. Another rugby scrum getting through the ticket check and under the subway. Endomondo on, Audiobook on and the final 1km walk home. At my door by 5.30 - remarkable - don't know when that last happened. In time for a run before supper. Half hearted attempt to watch some TV and do some work thereafter and then in bed by 9.30. Maybe I could get used to this...

Namibia

2012-01-29T08:24:00.000+02:00

Namibia

I hadn't been up this way since I was up here wearing a brown uniform an carrying an R5 automatic rifle. That is another story but it ended with my flying out of Walvis Bay in a "Flossie" which as I remember was a large transport aircraft in which whatever passengers there were sat in sort of hammock-style chairs, arranged longitudinally in the fuselage. There was no inner skin to the aircraft, as one has in a commercial jet, which meant that it got really cold and that the noise of the engines was deafening. They did provide us with earplugs, I think. That was about a month before I "klaared out" - got my demob. And that was that - my third and last trip to Namibia. So when the opportunity arose to revisit Windhoek, I had somewhat mixed feelings, but decided to go.

For some reason I was booked on Air Namibia. I asked my boss somewhat nervously if he had ever flown with them. “Oh, yes”, he said, “cheapest way to get to Europe - via Windhoek on Air Namibia.” Suitably comforted, I forbore asking for a change in my booking. The flight left CapeTown at around 6 pm on a Sunday. Our plane was a small twin engine jet - an Embraer, I think. Seated about 30. I had a window seat on the right and an empty seat next to me, which was nice. We had a smooth take off and the captain warned us we would probably have turbulence later on as there was thunderstorm activity all the way from the Orange River northwards. He was right, but it wasn't too bad. The sun was setting in the west and in the East we could see these huge banks of cumulonimbus with frequent flashes of lightning illuminating them. Rather pretty I thought, although I was glad they weren't too close.

I fiddled on my iPad and wrote the odd email. Before long the captain was on the blower again to tell us we were commencing our descent. Not sure why they tell you - you can always feel it. Again we were warned that we should expect turbulence on the descent and again it didn't happen. To make up for it though, he dropped the aircraft onto the runway with such a jarring thud that I thought the wheels would fold. They didn't. It was raining lightly when we disembarked and to my surprise we were asked to walk through the rain to the terminal building - no bus being available. That was a first for me, though I didn't really mind - it wasn't very far. I filled in the inevitable immigration form and handed my South African passport to the immigration officer. She was in the process of quizzing me about my intended activities when a fellow from the WHO came bustling up, ascertained who I was and told the young lady that he would take it from here. I felt like an immune diplomat!

For some reason the international airport in Windhoek is about 40km out of town. I remarked on it to a colleague from Antwerp and he said that this is the modern trend. Can't imagine why. Takes over half an hour to get there. I thought maybe it was all the mountains around the city centre - it kind of lies in a ring of high hills, a bit like Blantyre, but then many cities have much larger mountains close to their airports, mine being one of them. I chatted to Lord Charles on the way in and it went relatively quickly.

We were staying at the Safari Court Hotel. From what I can make out it is on the Gobabis Road, near the University and Technical High School and right next to the old Windhoek airport (which is presumably no longer international). Also nearby is the Windhoek country club, where we would be having our meeting. The hotel is a solid six story building, actually quite attractive in a sort of monolithic way, with nice grounds and pool. The rooms are old - mine had a radio next to the bed with "preselects", and it lacked a safe, but otherwise it was comfortable enough. Small planes, and an occasional larger one buzzed in and out of the airport. They started early in the morning but mercifully did not go on late into the night. I made daily good use of the gym and pool, both of which were world class.

The mornings were crisp and clear - maybe it was my imagination but the air in Windhoek just seemed a whole lot clearer than in Cape Town. I could see the surrounding mountains clearly, even without my glasses on. In the grounds some small birds played - nothing spectacular but nevertheless rather special. I heard a lot of Afrikaans spoken, which made me feel quite at home, as well as a fair amount of German. Of course, the meeting was in English. Unfortunately I did not get a chance to go out and see the city.

What else can I say about Windhoek? It rained a lot. I think it rained every afternoon in fact. Thunderstorms with lightning. Bad enough to keep me out of the pool. We were told that rain in December is unusual but welcome. The food was excellent and the beer was world class - Windhoek lager and draft, Hansa Tafel-lager - we get these brands in Cape Town but it somehow felt more special drinking them in the town where they are brewed. I had roast oryx at dinner one night - a type of buck - very good. One new thing about the WHO meeting - one no longer has a morning break for tea or coffee and pastries. They are now called "fruit and health breaks" and those delicious pastries and muffins have been replaced by bowls of apples and oranges. The public health part of my soul was all tumultuous applause. The hedonist part was protesting loudly - "get a life!!!" The Internet connection was slow but reasonably reliable. The Namibians I met seemed uncomplicated, friendly folks, proud of their young democracy (older than ours come to think of it, by about 5 years). They sang their national anthem with gusto. We sang the African Union anthem as well – first time I had heard it. Not bad. The words are very idealistic and flowery, but hey, what’s wrong with a little naïve optimism now and then? They seemed to get the balance right – enough pomp and circumstance to keep the politicians happy but not so much that it got in the way of the workshop proceedings. I am not a fan of large meetings but this was a reasonably productive one.

Before I knew it it was my last night and I was clearing the cupboard and packing. Then the long drive back to the airport and a short wait for my plane. Everything went smoothly, although some of my European colleagues were delayed – the SAA plane from Johannesburg was late landing, late taking off and in consequence one of them missed his connection to Zurich. I told him next time he should come via Cape Town!

So that was Windhoek. General impression: clean, pleasant, well run. Should probably go back and visit it again sometime, with herself and the princesses.

Getting to the top of the hill and the concept of a parabolic life trajectory

2012-01-28T18:44:00.002+02:00

Getting to the top of the hill and the concept of a parabolic life trajectory

This morning I ran, with about 10 others from my club, from Noordhoek to the viewsite at the top of Chapman’s Peak Drive and back. Tens of thousands of runners and cyclists will know this stretch well, because it is part of both the Pick ‘n Pay Argus Cycle Tour and the Two Oceans Ultramarathon. It is one of the most breath-takingly beautiful runs imaginable, with the mountain soaring up, vast and sheer and threatening, above you on the one side and the drop to the foaming white waters of the Atlantic on the other. Absolutely magnificent.

Of course, your legs soon let you know that you are running up a hill. You climb about 160m over the course of 5km, which is not inconsiderable, although I didn’t personally find it as heavy going as Ou Kaapse Weg, which I ran the previous Saturday. One of the important things about running up a long, steep hill is knowing where the top of the hill is, so that you can pace yourself and plan your run better. Which got me thinking about my own life …

As I recall from my Grade 11 mathematics, specifically the geometry part of it, the equation y=x gives you a different graph to the equation y=x² and different again to the equation y=1/x. One gives you a straight line, one a parabola and one a hyperbola, as I recall. Most hills are not straight lines – they are either parabolic or hyperbolic or some combination – you trundle along for a good few km, climbing gradually and then you do a lot of climbing in a relatively short distance and then ease off again to climb the remaining meters more gradually - sigmoid. Of course, having made it to the top, you have the opposite experience going down the other side or, as I did this morning, going back down the same side you came up. The trick, as I said, is knowing when the summit is coming and when you have “made it”.

One hears some senior citizens described as being “over the hill”, which is usually meant in a derogatory sense, to mean that they are past their best, have lost some or most of their faculties or capacities, and are really not to be trusted with responsibility. In that sense, I guess none of us wants to be “over the hill”. But in another sense, I am greatly looking forward to being “over the hill” – in the sense that I can take stock of how far up I have climbed, can enjoy the view, can ease off on the throttle and just enjoy life for a while. It seems to me that far too many of us stick to a straight line (never easing off) or even hyperbolic trajectory (peddling faster and faster as the “target” approaches – usually retirement). As we approach middle age and then retirement, we fail to recognise that, as my similarly-aged squash partner said to me the other day, “there is now more sand in the bottom half of the hour glass than in the top half!”

I have made a conscious decision to throttle back, as I approach my 50^th birthday, to take a little more time to smell the roses, or the coffee or whatever. To listen to more music, to read more books, to walk and run and ride more, to spend more time with my loved ones, to spend more time in prayer and meditation. On Wednesday I start a new job. There is no guarantee that it will be any less demanding than my current job but here’s the thing – it will allow me at least two hours a day of uninterrupted reading time on the train into and from the city centre, and it will force me to walk for about an hour a day, to and from the stations at both ends. It will very likely mean an end to my global wanderings, or a severe curtailment thereof, and a bit more local travel. I spoke to a friend this morning who is turning 70 this year and cannot decide whether he should continue working or not – he is a financial adviser and is worried about selling his business and handing his clients over to someone he doesn’t know well or trust completely. I can understand that. On the other hand, he has already had one heart attack, is moderately overweight and must be a good candidate for a second one. Surely he can see the writing on the wall…

So this is my plug for a parabolic life trajectory. Give it all you have got for those first 25 years of your working life – that is the way we are designed. Make your money, travel your travels, take your chances, live life to the fullest. But then know when to ease off on the throttle so that you can enjoy the view. Recognise when you have reached the summit. Don’t be afraid of the trip down the other side. You may have to put in extra effort once or twice when the south easter hits you or you hit an unexpected incline. You may, indeed, have to put in more effort than others. You’re not paralysed – just free-wheeling – the engine is still running under the hood. But don’t keep gunning it right up to the last minute just so that you can have the biggest nest-egg in the family, or the suburb or the city. Your biggest nest egg is your physical, mental and spiritual health – look after that first.

As 50 approaches, I am really looking forward to being “over the hill” (the princesses would say I have been for years, of course). Or at least being able to see the summit for the first time.

Berlin revisited

2012-01-16T23:53:00.001+02:00

Second trip to Berlin

Why would anyone want to leave sunny Cape Town where the temperature is 30 degrees Celsius and most of the sane population is on the beach, travel for 12 hours on overcrowded aeroplanes and then spend a week in a grey hotel in a grey city with grey skies where the night-time temperatures are negative and even during the day they struggle to get out of single figures? Not sure – next question…

Anyway, that is what I did. Part of my job. Life is tough.

Saturday

I have recently acquired an iPad, which I just love. One feature I use a lot is iTunes and specifically the podcasts one can download through iTunes and iTunesU. I have quite a backlog of podcasts to listen to now because every week more are added. My favourites are BBC History podcasts (did you know that Matilda agreed to marry Alfred after he had assaulted her in church and dragged her down the aisle by her hair?), Justin Breilly’s “Unbelievable” (basically a Christian apologetics program which generally manages, I think, to cover opposing views on religious and philosophical matters in an intelligent and reasonably balanced and fair way) and APM Krista Tippett’s “On being” (a somewhat similar program on faith, religion, ethics, philosophy, but much broader and not exclusively Christian).

Anyway I had an hour or so to kill before boarding at Cape Town so went to the SAA business lounge (despite the fact that I was flying Lufthansa – have recently been upgraded to Voyager Gold again), got something to eat and drink, sat down and plugged my headset into my ears (so I thought) and switched on a podcast – I forget which one. Funny, I thought, it seems very soft, so I found the volume control and turned it up to full. I was still struggling to hear it and it was only after a minute or two and some funny looks from my fellow travellers that I realised that my headphones were not in fact plugged into the iPad properly and that the podcast was blaring forth to all and sundry in the lounge – the reason that I thought it sounded a bit soft was that I had earphones in my ears. Embarrassing!

Sunday

Fairly uneventful trip. Landed at Frankfurt well before dawn and had the usual circus getting from one terminal to another through passport control and security before the boarding call, but somehow made it. It was dark and rainy when we took off for Berlin and dark and rainy when we landed. No snow this time. Tegel airport at Berlin (Berlin has more than one airport) is small and pleasant – well, small compared to Frankfurt and as pleasant as an airport can be. I think it has less than 20 gates and only 2 terminals, which puts it in the same league as Cape Town or Nairobi – manageable.

Having been here before I knew what to do this time. Weekly ticket (7-tage-kaart) for Berlin AB (i.e. you can’t use it beyond zone B, which is fine), cost me euro 27.20, which I paid on my credit card. All very efficient. Tried to buy a SA-European plug adaptor, but they didn’t have one. No great surprise. Found Bus 109 (“Zoologisher Garten”) which was on the point of departing. Validated my ticket and found a seat.

Found the Hotel Kurfürst easily enough. You have to get off the bus at Bleibtrau Strasse and then it is just a short walk up a side street. It is not a grand hotel – I gather it costs 60 euro a night for bed and breakfast and it advertises itself as being 3 star. But it is nice enough. This year they had me on the fifth floor. There is a very small lift which only goes as far as the fourth floor, and then one has to take the staircase. Odd. In fact there are many aspects of the hotel which are odd, but quite nicely odd. Maybe quaint would be a better description.

Once I had showered and stowed all my luggage I had a look out of the window. It was raining lightly but I figured I could bear it and didn’t want to miss the chance of a nice walk, so I took to the streets in running shoes, tracksuit bottoms and my US anorak. I switched on the GPS / Endomondo gizmo – I have discovered that it works even if the data connection is switched off – presumably communicates directly with the satellites, not through the cellular network. The rain got worse so I pulled out the jacket’s hood and must have looked like a bit of a weirdo but kept relatively dry. I walked down Kurfürstendamm and picked up a Café Latte Vente (the biggest one, €3.95) from Starbucks on the way, sipping it as I walked.

The zoo was open but at €12 a visit I wasn’t keen. Instead I took the path just after it which runs into the Tiergarten and on my map is labelled “Gartenuber” – not sure if that is the name of the street or something else. Anyway, it runs next to the “Landwehrkanal” and meets Katharina Heinroth Uber at what I think was the Botanical Institute – a large and grand but rather run down looking oldish building. I crossed the Kanal and headed into the Tiergarten proper. Something was really agitating the Endomondo voice-prompt – I had it on Autostart so that it would stop timing when I stopped (for instance at a traffic light) and start again when I restarted. She (it is a female voice) kept saying “Workout paused” and then a few seconds later “Workout resumed”. I eventually got tired of her and put her on mute.

In the middle (roughly) of the Tiergarten, where the major roads meet, is a large traffic circle called the “Grosser Stern”, in the middle of which is a monument called the “Sieges Säule”. The circle is very busy so they have two pedestrian underpassed with fine and massive marble gateways on either side of the “Straße des 17 Jun” – the main road which runs from the Brandenburg Arch west through the Garten. In the basement of the monument they have a small museum which details German National monuments in general – very interesting. It costs €3 to get in. You can then, if you have some energy and are not afraid of heights, climb the spiral staircase to the viewing platform which is about 15 feet above ground-level, or to the top of the tower, which I guess must be about 100 feet up. I did both. I am not good with spiral stairs or heights, but I looked steadfastly at the wall, and there were sufficient handrails and safety bars that I felt reasonably safe and did not throw up. The view from the top was worth it.

I then wandered up to the Arch (which is impressive but doesn’t quite compare to the Arc d’Triomf or Big Ben, I don’t think). On the way you pass the memorial to the 20 000 odd Russian soldiers who died taking Berlin. I think they might even be buried there. Odd that it should be in what was formerly West Berlin, but there you are. I walked a few blocks down Unter den Linden which is more a pedestrian concourse than a street really. Then I went north a block and doubled back up Dorotheastrasse to the Bundestag, which really is impressive – much more impressive than the Arch I thought. I could have caught a bus back to the Zoo but it was only a km or two and early so I thought I would just walk.

I saw a man “riding” an electric motorised three wheeler – looked fascinating and I was particularly interested because of our experiences with the bicycles. He was friendly enough to allow me to take a picture. A little further on I found what seemed to be a very tall steeple, complete with bells, but not church. It said it had been built by Mercedes Benz, and had a picture of someone playing what looked like an organ. The notice was in German and mentioned something about “Carillon”. Didn’t make sense at the time but I later figured out that he plays the “organ” which plays the bells. Must be quite something.

At this point I became aware that my bladder was filling or full and here’s the strange thing – the Berliners, for all their frightening competence and efficiency, had made no provision for me or people like me – not on a Sunday anyway. I found two public toilets and they were both firmly locked. What to do? In SA I would probably have just found a tree and relieved myself, but it was mid winter and none of the trees had any leaves. I imagined the headlines – “South African doctor appears in Berlin court charged with relieving himself in public”. As if to confirm my fears, a patrolling police car came gliding past, all but silently. No that would not do. Rule number one when travelling abroad – do NOT break any law, no matter how trivial! To cut a long story short (pardon the expression, no allusion to gadgetry intended), I made it to MacDonald’s, not without some discomfort, and was so grateful that I promptly ordered and ate a Big Mac, large fries and large Coke (non diet), which the helpful packaging informed me pretty much wiped out the 800 kCal which Endomondo had told me I had expended on my long walk. Sigh …!

I was in bed around 5 and for the first time in many months slept right through till 5 am Monday morning.

Monday and Tuesday

The course is run at the DRK Kliniek, which I have just worked out stands for the German (Deutsche) Red Cross Clinic. It is an attractive complex of oldish buildings on Spandauerdamm, just past S Bahnhof Westend, about an hour’s walk from our hotel, about 20 minutes on the bus (109 then 45). Lovely old red face brick with large wood-framed glass windows and steep roofs. High ceilings – impossibly high – they must have been worried about ventilation and TB. I must do some research but I would think they are about 150 years old. The days started with a hearty breakfast back at the hotel – cereal, fruit and yoghurt or something which I was informed by my Belgian friend was “plattekaas” (very tasty but I expect rather cholesterolific as well as calorific), fresh rolls or speciality breads with jam, cold meats or cheese – there was a good selection of gorgonzola, brie, camembert, emmental and a few others – washed down with a couple of cups of good filter coffee. They were intense and long and the evenings were spent preparing for the following day, so not much to report. The weather remained reasonably polite with only occasional light rain and temperatures generally above zero degrees C. It was black before five pm each afternoon and we went back to our hotel in the dark. Most nights I worked till around 9 and then took a walk down Kurfürstendamm towards the Tiergarten to get my fix of a Latte at Starbucks. The shop-fronts on “Kur’damm” are about 50% of clothes and shoe shops. Just about all of them were having a “sale” but the sale prices were frankly ridiculously high – €700 for a suit, 400 for a jacket, 300 for a pair of pants or shoes and so it went. Nice to look at but there it ended. They were closed anyway. Food prices were less scary but still high – a light meal such as a pizza or salad or soup around 5-10€; a more substantial meal like fish or a steak €10-15 and the more expensive dishes towards €20 – about twice what we would expect to pay in Cape Town.

Wednesday night

The Faculty dinner. Much anticipated, particularly by me, since we were told it would be at the same venue as last year and for an entire year I have been telling everyone who would listen how wonderful the beer was there. Brauhaus Lemke, which is just opposite Schloss Charlottenburg, advertises that its beers are “frisch gebraut für Sie, direkt aus unserem Lagerkeller”, and that is exactly how they taste. It was a clear, cold night so we walked from the Institute to the restaurant, which takes about half an hour. We had booked a table and managed to get about 12 of us around it, on the broad wooden benches. What to drink? There was an impressive offering of beers – seasonal beer, weise beer, wheat beer, and a few others. I ordered a large (500mL) seasonal beer which duly came in a long slender glass, and appreciatively started to slurp it. It really is good. The edibles were more difficult. I do try and eat local specialities when I travel unless they are prohibitively expensive (like salmon), morally bankrupt (like veal) or simply unappetising (like eel or Brussel sprouts). So I went for curry-wurst, which the Berliners say is a Berlin speciality, but which I gather a number of other German towns also lay claim to. It came as a large plate of fries and about 10 slices of sausage, covered with a curry sauce. It was good and tasty. Not sure that it was very good or very tasty. Not sure that I would have it again in a hurry but at least I can say I have had currywurst. All the while the beer sampling continued. I tried a tall non-alcoholic wheat beer, then moved to a 4*100mL sampler (Bierkostprobe), which included Lemke Original, Lemke Pils, Lemke Weizen and Lemke Saisonbier. I decided I liked the wheat beer best so finished off the evening with a final small glass of that. We then walked back to the hotel and managed to stay on the pavement.

Friday

We finished up around 3.30 so I had the late afternoon and evening to myself. Most of the others were flying out that afternoon so I was on my own. Someone had found me the Classical Music page from a local newspaper – not sure which one – from which I learned that I had quite a wide choice – “Ben Hur” at the Berliner Dom, Puccini’s “Turando” at the Deutsche Oper, organ recitals at the Emmaus Evangelical Church, the St Marienkirche and the Sophienkirche Mitte, concerts with varied programs at the Groβe Orangerie, the Haus des Rundfunks (sic!), the Hochschule fur Musik, Bizet’s “Carmen” at the Komische Oper, works by Chopin, Glasunow and Karlowicz at the Konzerthaus, something called “Lust, Leid und Lied” at the Lichtburgforum, a “garagenoper” festival at the Theatreforum Kreuzberg, piano classes with a professor at the UdK Konzertsalle Bundesallee or a Mendelsohn violin concert at the UdK Konzertsalle Hardenbergstr. Quite a choice! In the end I went to none of the above. I decided to go to an organ recital at Nikolaikirche, which was advertised for 17h30 – no ticket price quoted. I Googled Nikolaikirche and discovered that it was in the Nikolaiviertel, near the radio tower and the Alexanderplatz. Quite a distance from my hotel but I figured out I could get there if I took an M19 bus to Bulow Str and then the 148 to Alexanderplatz. Ja well no fine. The buses were very crowded and we had some delay to allow a lady in a wheelchair to alight and later to disembark (de-light?), but otherwise all was going swimmingly. I arrived at the church at 5.25 and was a little surprised to hear the magnificent organ in full swing. I hauled out my newspaper and asked the lady at the counter, in very broken German, whether I was in the right place, showing her the advert. She told me the concert had started at 5 and was almost over. She also looked at me in a somewhat pitying way as though I was an escaped imbecile. I pretended to look at the books and CD’s on sale while I caught the dying strains of the recital – whoever it was was very good. The music ended and there was some faint applause. People started to move out. I tried to go into the body of the church to get a look at the organ and was sharply corrected in German by the usher – something to the effect of not being allowed in without a ticket (despite the concert having finished). I grunted in her direction and left.

As I was close to the radio tower (Berliner Fernsehturm), and since we had missed going up it last time I was here because the weather was so bad, I thought I’d check it out. Eleven euro’s and about 15 minutes later I was on the observation deck a couple of hundred metres above the ground. The view was good but I am not sure it was worth 11 euro’s. It is quite nicely done with information boards around the perimeter every few meters, letting you know what you were looking at. The biggest problem I thought was that the windows are set at an angle – perhaps 60 degrees to the vertical so that you are looking out and down, if you know what I mean. All very well, but at night what happens is that the interior ceiling lights get reflected off the panes and it is well nigh impossible to get a decent photo. There is a bar on the observation deck level and a restaurant on the next level up – I had a look at the prices and decided that I wouldn’t be eating there anytime soon. I didn’t stay terribly long – maybe 10 minutes, but I wasn’t sorry I had come.

Back down at ground level I found the main road which runs into Unter den Linden and followed it roughly west, towards the Brandenburg Gate. There is an old-looking church right next to the tower called the Marienkirche. Last time we were here it was closed – this time it was open. I popped in and there were about four elderly folk milling around, looking like they were wanting to close up. The outside is beautiful old stonework, the inside spacious, with tall white plastered walls. There didn’t seem to be much else going on so I left. If I may be permitted a general comment, I haven’t found German churches terribly welcoming. Either they are firmly shut or else they appear to be geared up simply to fleece tourists. The idea that some visitors may be there with intentions slightly more spiritual than a desire to photograph the elevated pulpit, the high altar or the great organ doesn’t seem to have occurred to them. What would they say if I told them I had actually come to meditate or worse – to pray?! Are those words still part of their vocabulary? – they used to be! Perhaps I am being unfair.

I soon found Unter den Linden and followed it to the Gate. There was a keen wind blowing straight into my face and I was glad I had on a beanie and gloves. The zip of my anorak was malfunctioning so I had to hold it closed with my gloved hands which probably made me look as though I was bursting to relieve myself and clutching my crotch in consequence. WTF! From the Gate I followed the perimeter of the Tiergarten to the left, past some very fancy-looking office or apartment blocks, I am not sure which. To my right the Garden trees looked dark and somewhat ominous, yet there was a father pushing his toddler in a pram and another man walking his very small dog just meters away from the edge of the darkness. Fearless Berliners! You wouldn’t walk there if this was Cape Town!!

I passed the Sony building with its astounding architecture, but didn’t go in. I was heading for the Concert Hall where the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is based. I was on a mission. Last time I was here there was a concert with Sir Simon Rattle conducting and Yo Yo Ma on cello playing Shostakovich, I think. The cheapest ticket was 70€, so I passed it up and have regretted doing so ever since. This time there was due to be a performance of Edward Elgar’s “Dream of Gerontius”, conducted by Daniel Barenboim. I did not know the soloists’ names but I do know the music – I sang tenor in it myself once, many years ago (25 to be exact). I think it is a wonderful piece of music and I was very keen to hear it live again. The lady at the ticket booth spoke good English, which made a nice change. She told me there were still tickets, in the “G zone” – “Block Sonderpl, Reihe 1, Platz 4”, which I later learned indicated that they were “special seats” - and the cheapest was 30€. I did a quick calculation and decided it was worth it, so handed over my cash.

It was still early, so I went across to the shop to see whether there was anything affordable to buy. Some of the CD’s on sale made my mouth water, but the standard price appeared to be around 20€ and I figured I could get them cheaper back home. Pity. I made my way to an usher and asked the way to zone G. I am not sure whether it was just my imagination or if she really sniggered as she started explaining (in German) where I should go. [Maybe she thought I was asking about the G spot!]. Up this staircase, then up that staircase, along the corridor, up another staircase and then another. Hang on, I thought, how many staircases can there be? To cut a (very) long story short, the G zone seats are the highest in the house. There is a left and a right G zone. I was in “G-links”. Maybe you’ll get the idea if I tell you that we were just forward of the great organ along the left wall, and about three quarters of the way up the 32 foot pipes! I could see why they were the cheapest seats – for one thing you needed to be an trained mountaineer to actually get there. On the other hand, I was in Row 1, which meant that I had nothing between me and the orchestra except a piece of glass and about 50 feet of free-fall. The sound, when it happened, was beautiful. In fact, I wondered whether we didn’t perhaps have the pleasure of hearing a better balanced sound than those privileged folk who had mortgaged their houses in order to sit right in front of Herr Daniel’s podium. I guess I shall never know, since I very much doubt I shall ever sit there!

The “Dream of Gerontius” is an oratorio, built around poetry by Cardinal John Henry Newman, who lived in the 19^th century and wrote the poetry in 1865. It concerns a man’s dream of his own dying and of his soul going to face judgment. Needless to say it has a happy ending – Christ spares his soul and he goes to Paradise. The theology is a little, shall we say, heterodox, but the poetry is beautiful and the music is sublime. The solo parts are for the man and his soul (tenor), a female angel (alto) and the Angel of Agony – what a wonderful name! - (bass). The mixed choir are sometimes demons and sometimes “angelicals”, which must be a little disconcerting. It is set for a largish orchestra, complete with harp and grand organ. I like Elgar a lot. I am probably most familiar with his sacred choral music but I am also fond of his cello and organ concertos and his symphonies. I am not sure exactly why his music speaks to me, but it always has. So to me this was just superb – hearing one of the world’s finest orchestras under one of our best conductors perform some of my favourite music. I sat in my lofty perch and just soaked it up. I confess that more than once I had to wipe away a tear or two. I cannot see how anyone could not be moved by it, but clearly some were not – the fellow beside me disappeared at interval (or maybe he spotted an empty and better seat somewhere).

Too soon it was over. Herr Daniel and the soloists came back, and back, and back, were given bouquets, undying affection and tumultuous neverending applause and then finally left. We all moved slowly out – out into the cold of a windy, wintry Berlin night. A short walk took me to my bus-stop and after a mercifully short wait my bus appeared. Very soon I was back at Bleibtraustraβe and my hotel, it was then that I realised I had not eaten anything since lunchtime! I figured Starbucks would be closed – the one in the US near our apartment always closed at 9. The only nearby place open was the wurst takeaways on the opposite corner to us. I forget its name, but it doesn’t look like much – stuck away on the ground floor of a building which is being renovated, it looks a bit like any corner café in Cape Town or Johannesburg. But it isn’t. This place evidently got the prize recently for the best Currywurst in Berlin, which is saying something! It seemed that most folk were getting their wurst on a plate, swimming in the sauce. That didn’t appeal to me – too messy. I asked him whether I could have mine on a roll and he agreed. I think it cost me about 3€ and it was delicious. I washed it down with a Coke from the hotel room fridge and sank into bed thinking it had been a good day.

Saturday

Last day in Berlin. Woke late (7) simply because I could. Breakfasted late (8) for the same reason. My plane was only leaving for Frankfurt at 7 pm, so I had plenty of time. I checked out and left my baggage at the hotel, then headed down Kurfürstendamm to the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche. This is the one which used to be very grand, in the days of Kaiser Wilhelm, I guess, but was all but flattened in the war, from the bombing and then the street fighting. Most of the church was destroyed but the entrance hall remained standing as did the steeple, except for it’s top half – it kind of got lopped off, leaving a ragged edge. In consequence it is sometimes compared to a carious tooth – just the shell with the ragged edge remaining. I have extracted teeth like that and it isn’t easy – they usually break up leaving little bits behind in the socket. Since the war they have built a magnificent hexagonal chapel with a fine new organ. The walls, which must be around 30 feet high, are constructed out of thousands of square glass bricks. At first glance they all appear to be blue, which in itself is nice – it gives a very peaceful ambience to the place. But if you look more closely they each have varying amounts of red and yellow as well – so the three primary colours. Allusions to the Trinity? – I wonder. Anyway, there was supposed to be an organ/violin recital there at 10 a.m. I got there around 9.45 and heard the organ was once again in full swing, so assumed that once again I had misunderstood the German way of announcing the time of a concert! As it turned out, the violinist had not pitched up and the organist was practicing – I think he was due to give a second recital on his own in the evening. So over the course of the next hour I sat and listened to him practice. Of course, I did not know what he was playing. Some of it sounded as though it must be Bach or Buxtehude. I recognised some Mendelssohn. At one stage he launched into some very loud avant garde piece which could have been Messiaen. He certainly put the instrument through its paces, and we heard not only the big diapasons but the bass pedal reed and the ranks of trumpets put to good use. When I had had enough I quietly left. It had not cost me a cent.

I decided to spend the rest of my time walking around the Tiergarten for a last time. It was a fine day, if cold and there were many people who clearly had the same idea. I went clockwise from the Zoo. The north border of the garden is the River Spree and I had a very pleasant stroll along its south bank for a km or so, until I got to the Bundestag – the German Parliament. It has to be seen to be believed. The old building, which is colossal and monumental (no other words to describe it) is flanked by these ultramodern geometric concrete and glass constructions. I have been told that after the Third Reich there was a feeling that never again would government business be conducted in secret, behind locked doors, and so many or most of the offices are glass fronted and had it not been a Saturday, I expect I should have been able to see everyone at their desks. I like the idea – I think we could do with some of that spirit in SA.

I passed the Hauptbahnhof – the main Berlin Railway Station – and after consulting my map realised with something of a shock that until 23 years ago, the place where a train was travelling out of it would have been invisible from where I was standing, obscured by that insane Wall! Couldn’t quite get my mind around it, but there you are. Politicians like that should probably be euthanized at birth, for the good of all – if only we could predict which they would be. Then back to Unter den Linden, through the Gate again, and this time a slow wander through the Garden, down many an “Allee” and “Weg”, past many a statue, some of people well known to me, some of folk I have never heard of. It was a lovely brightly sunlit balmy afternoon and I enjoyed my walk immensely. At last I fetched up back at the Zoo.

I made a short stop in a large sports shop and admired particularly some of their cycling gear and accessories, but the prices, even on “sale” were really high and I didn’t buy anything. I saved my remaining euro’s for a last Café Latte Vente and cheese roll and the Starbucks in Kurfürstendamm, drank and ate them while walking back to the hotel, retrieved my baggage from the reception lady, left a tip for the cleaner, and hopped on the 109 to Tagel Airport. En route I had to strip off several layers of clothing – those buses are superheated and I had my long underwear on against the winter’s day. Don’t know how Europeans and Americans manage – I find the central heating quite oppressive and it can’t be very good for either one’s health or the environment. OK that is my rant for the day.

At Tagel, I managed something I have never managed before – getting into the business lounge in a foreign country. This by dint of having recently been upgraded to Gold. Ah, the life …! Had a couple of beers while I sat and wrote this, and shall have to stop now as they are about to call my flight.

Did the same thing at Frankfurt and fulfilled another long time desire – ate frankfurters in Frankfurt! And then it was time to board the big beast for the very long haul back to Cape Town.

Sunday

After a long, hot but otherwise uneventful flight, back in Cape Town. Strong south easter taking the edge off a rather hot day. As ever, good to be back.

The organ and windows of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church

The Bundestag and the River Spree

The “Grosser Stern”, in the middle of which the “Sieges Säule”

The Brandenburg Gate

Trees in the Tiergarten

The Hide

2011-12-24T19:47:00.000+02:00

The Hide

The bricked path to the Hide leads under shady acacia trees,

alongside lush lawns, next to beds of colourful wild flowers;

I approach slowly, reverently almost,

Binoculars in one hand, iPad in the other,

My head covered by a New Balance running cap,

A Holiday gift from my colleagues.

All around are the strains of birdsong,

Nearby a kingfisher chants shrilly from his lofty dead branch;

Further off the water dikkops wail mournfully, quietly;

The bottlebird warbles from his bush down by the riverside,

Far off, high above the river, a pair of fish eagles call majestically to one another;

All the while the river flows, rumbles, rushes, washes, swirls, singing its own powerful song.

I slowly, unsteadily mount the creaking central wooden staircase ladder;

Uneven slanting steps cause me to lurch and sway and almost fall;

I grab the handrail and the whole Hide seems to rock.

The assembled watchers look round, frowning, disapproving.

I mumble an apology and tiptoe to a vacant place on the bare wooden benches.

The obvious regulars are quickly picked out – the brilliant red bishop, Egyptian geese,

Egrets, bulbuls, babblers, spur fowls, weavers, prinias, swallows, swifts …

No one is that interested in them and neither am I.

Ticked them all off long ago.

No, we are here to Wait and Watch.

Watch and Wait.

Watch for the Coming.

Wait for the Revelation.

Will it be today?

The minutes tick by.

The lowveld afternoon air hangs thick and heavy about us.

Birds come and go, but nothing new happens.

There is peace here, and quiet,

but it is an expectant peace, an excited quiet.

Something momentous may happen today.

Something new may be revealed.

Suddenly, a gasp.

Inaudible, but felt.

A Watcher has seen something.

We follow the direction of her binoculars to the reeds below.

Another gasp, a group gasp.

Someone says the words “cuckoo finch”.

We all reach frantically for our books or iPads and page or type furiously,

In-between drinking in the sight of this diminutive yellow-brown creature,

flitting around in the reeds below.

We envisage ticking it off, chalking it up – a lifer!

The old man in the corner is silent, calm, unfrenzied.

For a long while he just sits and observes.

Then he intones in a deep voice through his white beard:

“Weeeaaaavvvvverrrr…..”

A groan, felt but not heard.

We return to watching and waiting.

Perhaps this is not the day, not the hour.

We must remain faithful.

Revelation could happen at any time.

Devotions over, we make our peace and leave quietly,

Singly or in twos and threes.

Out into the hostile world of the unbirded,

Those lacking our magnificent obsession.

The stairs creak again under the load. The structure sways.

The last watcher leaves and the Hide lies empty, deserted,

Maintaining its own watch.

oooOOOooo

London in the autumn

2011-11-12T18:42:00.001+02:00

Wednesday night, Thursday morning

Years ago I would not have considered doing this - flying 12,000 km for 2 nights. When these trips came up I would always find an excuse to tag on a few days at the beginning or the end of the work part and go and visit friends or family. I have stopped doing that for 2 reasons. One is that working on contract I no longer have the leave. The other is that I was just spending too much time away from home. So here I am 34000 feet above the Mediterranean coast on my way to London for a meeting which will probably not take more than 3 hours, 5 at the outside. And yes, I know that I will get into trouble with the carbon emission police. My only defence is that if we don't do something fast about certain infectious diseases then it won't matter how much carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere because we won't be around to experience it - and that is why I am in London. Another, much weaker, defence is that SA220 would have gone anyway, regardless of whether I was on it or not - but that is really no defence at all.

We are in the new SAA airbus 330-200 which I must say is a lovely plane. So nice to be the first or one of the first to use a really good piece of equipment before it gets broken. Feels like Christmas morning! Each seat has a screen which actually works. There is a great navigation program. The movies work. The coach class seats seem to have a little more room between them and when they tip back the sitting part moves forward a bit, like the seats in business class do. This is an overnight flight - we left Cape Town around 8 last night and it is now 6.30 South African time, 430 local. In a few minutes they will likely switch on the lights and serve us a half edible breakfast but right now it is still dark in the cabin and most folk are snoozing. That is the other thing - the flight is half empty. I realize that is not good for the airline and probably not good for prices or the environment, but it meant that the seat beside me is empty. In fact one person in the middle block has four seats to himself and is stretched out with more room than British airways business class. Maybe that is what happens on a Wednesday night.

When I awoke and looked out the window just now we were just approaching the Algerian Mediterranean coastline. The moon is full and just setting in the west, reflected off the sea and the night cloudless. Quite pretty. There is a bright planet just below the moon which my astronomy program on the iPad tells me is Jupiter - who would have thought? Now we are over Barcelona, actually Reus, approaching Andorra and the Pyrenees - I expect that may give us a little turbulence. Then north west, passing between St Giron and Tarbes, between Bordeaux and Perigueux, (don't you just love these names?!), Niort and La Rochelle, Nantes and Angers / Saumur, Rennes and Le Mans, Cherbourg and Bayeux, and then on across the channel to London. We seem to have deviated east from the direct course - maybe we are too early - I know there is a curfew until 6 am local time on landing at Heathrow.

I watched a really strange movie last night while I finished a small bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon and before sleep overtook me. It starred Brad Pitt and Sean Penn and was directed by someone called Terence Malick. It was called The Tree of Life and was noted to be "2011, Drama, PG13, 138 minutes. ... An impressionistic story of a Midwestern family in the 1950's. The film follows the life journey of the eldest son, Jack, through the innocence of childhood to his disillusioned adult years." It starts with a quotation from the book of Job - "were you there when I laid the foundations of the earth..." and so on, then goes to the death of his brother in the war, presumably Viet Nam, and how it affects his mother. Then it cycles back to Jack's own "creation" with lots of impressive imagery of galaxies being born and volcanoes erupting ... all very interesting but I wasn't sure that I got it. And then the story itself - his overbearing, manly father who goes to great lengths to raise his boys right, his beautiful mother for whose love and attention he has to compete with both his brothers and his father, his near idyllic youth in this country bumpkin town where his dad works and where his family lives. As the blurb warned, it ends in disillusionment with his father getting retrenched when "they" close down his factory, selling up the house and moving to the city, and Jack the adult searching restlessly in the board rooms and skyscrapers which now define his existence for what he has lost. I probably need to watch it again, perhaps on the big screen and at a time when I am not tired and have a clearer head. As I said, enjoyed it but wasn't sure I "got it".

We are supposed to land shortly after six a.m. At this time of the year I expect it will still be dark. My plan is to get through immigration and customs and go and leave my bags at the hotel, en head into town on the underground, to Euston station, and then take the train to Leighton Buzzard where I am meeting my uncle and aunt, and possibly my cousin, for lunch there or up at Milton Keynes where they work. I have with me a small packet of goodies for my uncle - six copies of my grandfather's poems and a used music edition of the Presbyterian hymnal. What is special about them is that you cannot get them in the UK. In fact you probably can't get them anywhere else. So I feel as though I am actually earning my pub lunch today...

We have just descended a level and are continuing to do so. Just passing over Cherbourg now. Have to switch off.

Later:

Well we had a smooth landing but had to wait for about 15 minutes on the apron because the "other airline" (never discovered which one) aircraft had not vacated our parking space. Irritating but not the end of the world. Well, not for me anyway - I didn't have a connecting flight to catch. And anyway, we were about half an hour early. Passport control and customs was a breeze. Some American colleagues who arrived later told me they stood in the "non EU" queue for over 2 hours - when I went through neither the EU nor the non EU queues were more than about 10 people. Strange.

I've done this routine a few times now so pretty much know my way around. Terminal 1, central bus station, find the U3 bus (they had changed the station), get off at the Hong Kong restaurant and walk the remaining few hundred metres to the Sheraton - fortunately it wasn't raining. Last time they gave me the gears about arriving early - this time they didn't - they were only too happy to usher me into Room 1409 (I later discovered they charged me an additional 40 pounds for this privilege) which, it turned out, was conveniently close to the front desk - always an advantage in this day and age when one's magnetic door key needs to be reset every time it comes within a mile of your blackberry case! I unpacked, showered and changed, and headed out to see my uncle and aunt in Bedfordshire.

This routine I have pretty much got taped now. I bought my ticket shortly after the end of peak time (9.30 am), which meant it was cheaper, Heathrow to Leighton Buzzard return. I think it was about 20 pounds. Then onto the London Underground, headphones in and turned up to maximum volume (I have learned), and so to Euston. I cannot quite recite the Piccadilly Line (to Cockfosters!) stations off by heart but just about. Heathrow, Hatton Close, Hounslow West, Central and East, Osterly, Boston Manor, Northfields, South Ealing, and Acton Town. I love the names and found myself thinking that each of them must have a story and a history attached to it - must have a look in Peter Ackroyd's book. Hammersmith, Baron's Court, Earl's Court - who were the Earl and Baron, I wondered. Gloucester Road, Knightsbridge, Hyde Park Corner and Green Park. Was there a special bridge over the Thames for Knights of the Realm? Is the park named for its colour or after a Mr or Ms Green? Piccadilly Circus. Circus? WTF! Leicester Square. I got off at Leicester Square and made my way through tunnels to the northern line and thence past Warren Street and finally to Euston Station. Getting from the tube to the over ground midlands trains is quite a challenge. The main thing to remember is not to stop in the middle of the passage or concourse and look at the notice boards - not if you don't want to be roundly cursed by commuters in a hurry or simply bashed into.

I found my train and found a seat. The midlands trains are clean, comfortable, quiet, fast, air-conditioned - somewhat in contradistinction to the tube. Soon we were (it felt like) flying north west, through suburban London, and then into the countryside. I spotted the Grand Union Canal a few times, but the rest was pretty much a blur of hamlets, villages, fields and cows, and an occasional ruined castle. Across the aisle from me two young ladies were discussing their hair, their fingernails, their boyfriends, their girlfriends' boyfriends, their parents, their religion ... and then one of them said something about Bafana Bafana, which made me sit up and take notice, but I couldn't work out the context. Before I knew it, the lady on the PA was telling us that Leighton Buzzard was next. I gathered my stuff together and went and stood at the door. Now these are high tech trains - you don't wrench open the doors like you do in Cape Town (and usually your shoulder at the same time). You push a button and wait for the electronics to open the door for you. When it doesn't, you push it again - and again - and again ... eventually it did open, but not before I had got myself into quite a state. The lady on my left commiserated and said it always freaked her out as well.

I was a little early for my uncle so took a short walk around Leighton Buzzard. There is a fairly attractive but not particularly ancient looking parish church quite near the station, which is being renovated. There was a railway hotel which I think just have been burnt down and is also being resorted. It reminded me of a song by Mike Batt which I have always liked, whose lyrics go something like "I knew the Savoy would have suited you well, but the best I could do was the Railway Hotel". Some pics below.

Ancient Uncle arrived on time with an even more ancient friend, whom we needed to drop off at his home, then we went and fetched my slightly less ancient aunt, and headed to Milton Keynes for lunch. Before we left I handed over the books I had brought and they gave me some goodies to take back to SA for my even more ancient mother. Why Milton Keynes - well, there was a possibility that my cousin might join us - in the end he didn't but that was why we chose MK. We lunched at Camperdown, which is an establishment, as I understand it, for mentally handicapped people, where they live and where they are employed. Our watrons were such people, although the manageress wasn't. The menu is vegetarian, and the veggies are grown on the estate. I had a lentil pasta main and a hot pudding with custard, washed down with a local beer called "Cock and Bull", which was really nice. I found the whole experience delightful and was glad we had come here. We ended it off with a short walk around the estate - very pretty, particularly the trees in the autumn colours. They dropped me back at the station in time for me to catch the 5.43 to Euston. This was much more crowded than the train had been coming north, but I still got a seat and was fairly comfortable. The tube, in contrast, was another matter. Two trains came and went before I could even get on to one. Then it was a case of pull your stomach in, try not to mind the invasion of your personal space and hold on tight. It was like that all the way to Acton Town - that was the first time I was able to sit down. I got back to the hotel around 8 and went across to the MacDonalds (where I am sitting now) to catch up emails.

Friday

Most of Friday was taken up by the meeting, which was ... a meeting. In the afternoon I decided I would try and run around Heathrow - I was feeling rather bloated and needed some exercise. I didn't realise quite how large the airport is - I got about one quarter of the way around and decided that would do, so turned around and returned. The total distance for the run was about 8km. What is unusual about Heathrow (I think) is that it is plonked in the middle of suburbia and even farmland. The northern runway runs fairly close to Bath Road and the northern perimeter road, both of which are accessible to walkers and runners, so you can watch (and hear) the big birds landing and taking off, which I enjoy.

We met at 7 pm for dinner. The plan was to go to our favourite watering hole, called the White Hart, just down the road, and have a meal together. The vehicle which had been hired wasn't quite large enough, so three of us walked. It was cold but pleasant enough. The White Hart is a traditional and I think quite old English Pub. I have had a meal inside before - it is very small and crowded. But they have an outside section, which is more open. Long wooden tables with radiant gas heaters and provided. They had a little trouble getting ours to work but finally it came together and we sat down. I ordered a glass of London Pride Ale, which got refilled twice during the evening. I always try to eat local specialties, so went with what was billed as Traditional English Bangers and Mash. It was GREAT! Who needs fancy cuisine?!

We stumbled back around 10 and I fell into (or more correctly onto) my bed with the TV on, full clothed, only to wake in the small hours with a rather dry throat.

Saturday

My plane only leaves around 8pm so I had the day to do with what I liked. I thought about going into London and shopping but didn't feel like the tube, so finally went for a long (very long) walk through some of the local villages - Harmondsworth and West Drayton. I have investigated the former before, but not the latter. It is lovely - very pretty indeed. I wandered through fields, parks, past old churches and an old building labelled "Drayton Hall" which I presume was the original manor house. I walked next to streams, copses, mounds, lakes - one would never have guessed I was only a few km from one of the largest and busiest airports in the world and within the municipal boundaries of one of the globe's largest mega-cities. In the end I walked about 21km over 4 hours - I know this because I had Endomondo running. I discover that it works even if your data services are not on - presumably it doesn't need them to pick up the satellite signal, which I guess makes sense.

Right now I am killing a little time, but shall shortly have to get my act together and head across to Heathrow 1 and start the usual circus of checking in for my flight. Give me patience!

Sunday

The flight back was fairly ho-hum. I got the timing right for once - I cannot count the hours I have spent wandering aimlessly around the Heathrow 1 shops waiting for the information to go up on which gate to go to, because I have checked in too early. Airport shopping malls irritate me at the best of times. There is something not right about imprisoning large numbers of people for hours on end in these overheated, overcrowded complexes in the hope that they will spend their every last penny on items they neither need nor want out of sheer boredom and desperation. I don't believe for a minute the duty free lie - probably one of the biggest hoaxes in the history of commerce - it seems pretty obvious to me that the shops hike their prices to make up for the fact that one is not paying sales tax or VAT or whatever. And not to be too hard on the shop owners - i expect they have to do that because of the exorbitant rents charged them by the airports authority. Why is there never a Marks and Spencers or a MacDonalds? Presumably because one would spend too little money there, or heaven forbid, actually find something one wanted....

This time my flight left at 8.10 p.m. and so I tried getting to the bus stop at 5 which turned out to be about right. I missed two buses because I wasn't alert enough and didn't signal my desire that they stop, but eventually a number 76 came rolling by and we stopped it. As long as you are 3 stops or less from the terminal the trip is free. I have been told this is because there is no pedestrian access to the airport and so they had to come up with a compromise. I was soon as the central bus station and made my way to check in. Passport control and security was short and sweet. I still had about an hour to wait in the shopping concourse but that was fine. I tried to find some liquorice for herself and couldn't, not even at Harrod's. Nothing else grabbed me. I need some black work shoes but wasn't tempted by those on offer at Clark's, which seemed to start at about £50 a pair, or those at Timberland which started at about double that. I had some heavy coins I wanted to be rid of, so ended up using them at a slot machine in exchange for a bag of wine gums and a bag of chocolates. The board finally informed us to make our way to gate 33, which is about the longest walk one can have from the central concourse.

I was delighted to see that our plane was the same new Airbus 330-200 we had come on. The pilot later informed us that it had come off the plant in Toulouse on July 2nd this year. Very new indeed. The flight was not as empty as the outbound one, but still empty enough and I once again ended up with an vacant seat next to me, which was nice. I had a Windhoek light beer, and then a glass of Pinotage with my meal, which was a reasonably edible beef and potato stew. I have now learnt that the deserts are best avoided and I even resisted the temptation to eat the butter with my roll. When the lights were down I had a look at the entertainment on offer. I went for one of the foreign movies. Something called "El Hombre De Al Lado," ( the man next door) with English subtitles. It was billed as drama, not rated, 110 minutes, directed by Mariano Cohn and Gaston Duprat, 2010. It stars Rafael Spregelburg. The blurb said "Leonardo lives with his family in an architectural wonder. One morning, he wakes to an irksome noise and is appalled to discover that workmen next door are constructing a large window that faces directly into his home." I think it is set in Argentina. I enjoyed it, but shall have to think about it for a while before I figure out what it was actually about....

Now we are cruising down above the coast of Namibia, probably just around Walvis Bay and Swakopmund, which brings back memories from long ago for me - different era, different me, different life. When I open the window the Atlantic looks impossibly bright and blue. I guess a few days of the cloudy skies and muted light of West London has left my eyes overly sensitive. In another sense, though, Africa is stark. There is no mistaking reality here. I was looking at some of the building complexes along Bath Road yesterday - ugly factories or office blocks, but with well-maintained, manicured embankments and fine wrought iron fences between them and the road, which somehow muted their ugliness. Cape Town has lots of ugliness, but it is by and large in your face, in your front yard ugliness - there is little effort made to hide it or mute it. Driving in from the airport to the city centre you see it on both sides of the road - urban slums. Driving around the city you see it at every intersection - beggars. On a still winter's day you see it hanging above the city - brown haze. Open any of our newspapers and it will be on the front page - gang warfare, murders, rapes, hijackings, corrupt politicians - ugly, ugly, ugly. But at least the dirty washing is out on the line for everyone to see. We got a glimpse of England's dirty laundry with the "hoody" riots a few months ago. Countless English people seemed to be asking themselves, their neighbours, their members of parliament, "Where did all this ugliness come from?" and then we had the interminable communal navel gazing rumination about education and alienation and listening to young people and so on. Visiting London now, I saw no sign that they had ever occurred, although admittedly I did not visit Croydon or any of the other worst affected areas.

We have just flown over the South African border. It is good to be home. Much as I am coming to love England and London, and I am, it is good to be home.

Later still

There were two layers of cloud as we descended. I heard later that there is snow on the Helderberg – in November! The first glimpse of the ground I got I recognised as Long Beach. Odd. Moments later we got through the lower cloud layer and I looked out my window to see Simonstown harbour. The captain took us south a few more km, affording me an excellent view of Cape Point from False Bay, and then we made a graceful arc to the left. Once we levelled again I could see Hangberg and Kogelberg and the Hottentots Holland mountains. Then it was a slow glide over Khayelitsha and Mitchells Plain, and a surprisingly quiet and smooth northerly landing. Passports, luggage and customs done, I emerged into the Cape wind and felt again that it was good to be back.

The Railway Hotel at Leighton Buzzard

The church and park at Leighton Buzzard

The Green, Drayton West

The Gate House, next to the church at Drayton West

The church at Drayton West

A somewhat anachronistic pub on Bath Road, very close to Heathrow

Kinky running

2011-10-23T23:01:00.001+02:00

I have a new running partner - the Revered Hungry Kink. Kinky for short. Kinky and I go back a long way. Ok, maybe I should rephrase that - we have known each other for 35 years. We went to the same school. I was a day boy who lived just up the road with my parents. He was a boarder whose parents lived far away on a coal mine near Witbank, arguably the smelliest town in the country. I was into rugby and music, he was into wildlife photography. I was in the geography and biology class, he took art and history. Seemingly not a lot in common, but we became close friends at school and ended up spending a week hiking the 'berg together with Nobleman Shittier, and subsequently a week hiking the Wild Coast. Good times. His folks were real salt-of-the-earth South Africans. His Dad had worked his way up from being the office messenger to the mine's financial manager. He gave the three of us a lift down to the Drakensberg for our week there. I remember putting one of my Genesis tapes into the car's radio cassette player. The old boy tolerated Peter Gabriel and co. for about 20 minutes and then announced, in inimitable South African style, "OK, let's have some white man's music!" as he turned on the radio. Priceless.

The kink studied to be a metallurgical engineer at Wits. I visited him a few times in res, played the occasional game of squash when I was up in Jozi, saw him once in a while. Then we kind of lost contact. I heard he had been G5'd out of the army because of having had one fit, ? epileptic. It never recurred but they didn't want him holding an R5 so he wasn't required to join the engineers' corps. I think he got a job on the mines or with Iscor, well paid, somewhere in the old Transvaal, but am not sure. As I said, we lost contact.

Then a few years back I was shopping at Blue Route Checkers with my two kids and this tall, thin bald guy comes up and says my name with a question mark at the end. I must have looked blank or stupid or both, because he then told me his. It was the Kink. He had moved to Cape Town and was living in Claremont. I asked him what the @#$% a metallurgical engineer was doing in Cape Town, to which he replied that he had given up being an engineer and was teaching science at a well-known private high school for boys in the mother city. He said he had had to take a 2/3 cut in salary but had never been happier.

Over the next year or so he introduced me to the art of restoring and maintaining vintage BMW motorcycles, invited me to his 40th birthday party (all I recall was that he wore a very strange wig and black tights) and promised to take me hiking up Du Toit's Peak. He also underwent surgery on both knees for shot ligaments. Then he disappeared again, chasing some woman to the UK, intent on marrying her. That too failed, and the next I heard from him was an email with a picture of him riding a very large Ducati, somewhere near a Norwegian Fjord. He does that - a few years later he sent me a similar shot from the Caprivi strip.

This is getting to be a long story so I will cut it short. The romance failed, he returned to Cape Town and his job at the boys' school, and he moved to Glen Cairn, where he had bought a rather run down but very well appointed bungalow with the most glorious view of False Bay. He proceeded to renovate the place over the next year, mostly on his own.

Given his knee issues, I was rather surprised when he told me he had started road running. "What about your knees?" I asked. He said he had read "Born to Run" by McDougall, had learned how to run on his forefeet and this had sorted out all his knee and ankle issues. Well it seemed to work - his times are substantially better than mine.

So that is the Kink. We now belong to the same running club (he had other motives for joining - his girlfriend is a leading light there). We run most Saturday mornings unless there is something else more urgent. Whereas the Handsome Masha and I discuss politics and philosophy on our runs, Kink and I talk about the old times and the old school, the quality of refereeing in the Rugby World Cup, motorbikes, and the like. Thank God for good friends.

Uganda

2011-10-20T12:08:00.008+02:00

The Pearl of Africa. Uganda. I expect the country was pretty much unknown in the West for a long time, except to those in the British colonial services whose job it was to administer it and to those who had business interests there. Next year, Ugandans celebrate their half centenary of independence from the British, I read in a local newspaper - so that would be 1962, I guess. Then Big Dada Idi Amin arrived and suddenly Uganda was on the map - but for all the wrong reasons. My friends here still talk about those years - they were children at the time and they talk of the time, "towards the end" when you weren't safe in your own house at night. Came dusk, families would leave their houses and sleep in the bush, for fear of Amin's soldiers. You see the trauma in their eyes, and the deep sorrow. They tell you quite openly that the present government, under President Museveni, is not perfect, but they always add that nothing comes close to being as bad as the way things were under Amin.

And of course there was the Israeli special forces raid on Entebbe airport - the airport where I am sitting right now, even as I write this. The details of what happened are available in books, on websites and in at least one film. By all accounts it was extremely daring and well executed. One Ugandan friend told me that it only succeeded because their radar systems at the time were faulty and that ere is no way it could happen now. I wouldn't know. My observation is that it dented the national pride somewhat, even if it did occur during the tenure of a much hated dictator.

We flew in on Sunday evening on the direct flight from Johannesburg. I have taken it before and enjoy it because it is relatively short (4 hours) and because it seems invariably to arrive just as the sun is setting. As one is virtually plumb on the equator here, I guess that makes sense - sunset at 6pm and sunrise at 6 am all year round, or so I have been told. If you are lucky and there is not too much cloud around, you get some beautiful views of Lake Victoria and it's myriad islands as you make your final approach to Entebb airport, whose runway is right next to the shore.

Uganda is one of the countries where South Africans do require a visa, but you buy it for $50 when you arrive. The whole operation is quite efficient - that is, they have worked out how to relieve foreigners of $50 quite efficiently. Apart from handing over the money, the only other requirement is that you fill in one of those tedious but much loved by African bureaucracies immigration forms - yellow in Uganda, blue in Kenya, but all much the same - and smile politely as you say Habari and Asante. Oh, and they take digital scans of your finger prints on entry and exit, I guess to make sure it is the same person who comes and goes.

I am traveling with a colleague from Cape Town. It is his first trip, so I was able to provide some advice and information on what not to do. Don't mention the raid. Don't eat the salad. Don't walk in the road. Don't drink the tap water. Don't take pictures of official looking buildings. Don't give the presidential cavalcade the finger when it comes past - the basics of survival in Kampala. We collected our bags, cleared customs and found our shuttle driver. We were booked into the Metropole hotel, one of many in central Kampala. The distance from Entebbe is about 25km, I think, but it can take anything from 45 minutes to 3 hours to get there, a bit like Nairobi. The traffic is legendary. I was trying to describe the "jam" outside our hotel to a friend in an email and eventually resorted to "imagine all the cars on the N1 in rush hour trying to drive along Main Road from Muizenberg to Fish Hoek." The point being, for those not from my neck of the woods, that the N1 is a three lane highway, and Main Road is a single lane road which has been under construction / repair for over 3 years now. Picture that and you have, I think, a pretty good picture of Kampala in a "jam".

Our trip that evening took us about an hour - there were no major "jams". We sped along at a reasonable rate, dodging the odd motorcyclist, minibus or pedestrian. Traffic etiquette seemed to be fairly similar to what I have observed in other major African cities such as Maputo and Nairobi - size counts, pedestrians and cyclists have no rights, motorcyclists have half rights, driving on the pavement is allowed, pulling out in front of oncoming traffic is ok as long as you do so purposively and flash your lights, likewise overtaking on a blind rise ... you know, the usual stuff. I glanced across at my colleague to see what color his knuckles were and whether he had chewed through the seat belt yet and was surprised to see that he was fairly calm. When I asked him, he said that he had been driven around Rome a few times and that this was fairly tame in comparison! I guess the difference is that in Rome the average age of the vehicles is about ten years less than in Kampala and the roads are in better nick.

Our hotel, the Metropole, is what they call a boutique hotel, whatever that means. I could not fault it, except that it had no swimming pool. It is right next to the Uganda golf club, and close to the centre of town. My room was on the third floor and looked onto the course, separated from it by a stream with some very tall gum, banana and other trees on it's banks, which were the playground and possibly homes of several bird species - we heard or saw kingfishers, marabou storks, cuckoos and a number of others. The room was spacious and clean with a small balcony. I did not pay for the trip but was told the rate was $120/night for bed and breakfast, which is, comparatively speaking, not bad at all. At check in we were given a note from our American colleagues to say that one of them had gone to bed, the other was on the patio. We found our rooms, unpacked and made our way to the patio, which was on the first floor, also overlooking the golf course. We found our colleague, who was doing emails on her iPad, joined her table and ordered some beers. I remembered from my previous trips that one of the Ugandan beers is called a Nile. Someone once told me that they use the water from the Nile at Jinja to make it, but I have not been able to confirm the theory. Having been to Jinja and seen same water, I hope that it is incorrect! Another is called a "Club" and there is a third, whose name I forget now. Then one can also get Kenyan beers, for example Tusker malt or Tusker lager. They all come in 500ml bottles, which is 50% more than our standard pint or can in south Africa. They were surprisingly cheap - 4500 Ugandan shillings each, whichbis about $1.50. My colleague asked me which I suggested and I gave him my standard line: "there is no such thing as a bad African beer" which is probably not true, but I have always enjoyed sampling the local brews. A liter of beer each later we headed for bed. The most momentous decision to be made was whether to close the door and run the (rather noisy) air conditioner or leave the door open with just the screen door closed, and the air conditioner off. I opted for the former the first night but changed after that.

I woke to the shrill calls of the kingfishers in the trees. I thought briefly about going for a run but decided against it. Instead I had a leisurely shower, dressed and made my way to breakfast. I wore a tie and jacket, not sure how formal our meetings would be. Breakfast was a simple affair but quite pleasant. The coffee was strong and local, and what else matters?! I had some cereal and fruit, to assuage my conscience, and some toast and jam to fill a gap or two, but decided to skip the cooked offerings. I generally avoid red meat when traveling in Africa because one is never really sure what one is eating, and because I have had some really nasty sausages in my time.

The days were full of meetings, the details of which do not matter. Lunch was provided and consisted of banana (plantain), steamed in its own leaves, together with rice, beans and spinach, all of which i enjoy. I avoided the chicken option. Evenings were spent on the patio having extended sundowners and eating from the hotel kitchen. I had some excellent tilapia fish from the lake - tikka one night and red curry another. I think that if I lived in Kampala as an expat I might well get into that particular groove.

On the second morning we were picked up (or "picked" as they say in east Africa) by our host's driver in an elderly Land-cruiser. The traffic was particularly bad and we were concerned (as was he) that we would miss our meeting at 9 a.m. Accordingly, he hung a right and went careering down a side alley, up another and soon we were climbing one of Kampala's famous seven hills via a rather rudimentary looking mud track. I was sitting in what we used to call the "dog box" - the back section. Next moment we all heard a loud hissing noise from the back left tire and we ground to a lopsided halt. Puncture! We all got out and stood around making helpful comments while the driver changed the wheel. Then it started raining. To cut a long story short, we were offered a lift by the driver of another Land-cruiser who just happened to be taking the same short cut. It did however allow me a few minutes to explore the area and take a few pictures - see below.

On our second afternoon there, we had an hour or so in hand and so decided to try and burn some calories by going for a run. Not having a map, we opted to try and run around the golf course, which looked fairly sizable. We found a path which took us straight across it and followed it, looking out for flying golfballs as we ran. It took us to the main road which ran along the far side of the course. The pavement was not very wide, a bit broken and quite crowded, so we decided to run along the fairway, parallel to the road. Bad idea. A security guard came running after us, clapping his hands and motioning us to get off the course. So pavement it was. At this stage we were adopted by a stray dog, about the size of a Dalmatian. She ran with us for the full half hour and only left us when we disappeared back into our hotel. The course is long and narrow - I expect most golf courses are. The area around the bottom was taken up by a hideous hotel with a revolving restaurant on top of a tower - "soos 'n puisie op 'n perd se poephol" as they say in Afrikaans. Also a shopping mall called Garden City, but sans anything even vaguely resembling a garden. We were glad to leave the thronging main road and get back to the Metropole.

We attempted a second run the following day. I had consulted google maps, which was probably a mistake. I was sure there was a road around the top of the course which, if we took it, would spare us the bit past Garden City, dodging motorbikes and four wheel drives. We couldn't find the road so consulted a security guard (every second person in Kampala appears to be a security guard). He told us to turn left here, right there and so on. We ended up in a somewhat dodgy looking area and scrambled our way past shacks, over seriously muddy dirt roads until we found the main road again. Nothing like a bit of cross country. We had had enough, and my colleague's knee was playing up so we called it a day.

On the Tuesday night our hosts took us to dinner at an Indian restaurant. I gather it was north Indian. I think it was called something to do with New Delhi. We sat under a gazebo on a manicured lawn. The air was warm, there was no wind and no rain. I had bought myself and was wearing a very bright, collarless, patterned shirt, which I was assured was "traditional Ugandan" and a likewise traditional floppy brown hat made of "bark cloth" - looks a little like felt but rougher and drier, and is made from the bark of one of their trees - from the shop at the hospital which sells for the HIV infected mothers who bring their kids there. We sat and chatted, sipped our drinks, ate our Dahl and a good many other dishes - I know there was vegetarian, fish, goat (which they call mutton in Kampala, our host told us), and chicken. It was a delightful meal and evening and I thought I could get used to this...

This morning we were up at four to leave at four thirty. We had been advised that traffic to the airport was not something to take lightly, so we gave ourselves a reasonable cushion. Our plane was at 7.25. As it turned out, it was as well that we did. There was no problem with the traffic but the credit card machine at the hotel was giving hassles which took about 15 minutes to sort out. Always something! The drive itself was fairly uneventful - we just stopped once and that was to refill the windscreen washer bottle - the roads were very muddy after the rains. I was told that it has been raining just about every day since May which is very unusual and is confusing the farmers and ruining the cotton crop.

We were at the airport by 5.30. Check in, security and immigration were surprisingly hassle free. We made a brief sortie into the "duty free" to pick up some overpriced Ugandan coffee for my colleague, were declined entrance to the business lounge (one has to be Voyager gold) and finally sat down in the cafeteria just in time to be told to get up and go to the boarding gate. More scans and security checks and finally we were on board. Last minute SMS to herself, cell phone off, doors closed, safety video over and then we were hurtling down the runway. We seems to take forever to get airborne but I expect the pilot knew what she was doing. We rose above the lake and I looked down on an array of huts and beaches and little fishing craft and realized that this was the real Uganda, not the comfortable hotel, fancy restaurants, golf courses and erudite company I had spent three days enjoying.

Now we are cruising somewhere high above Tanzania, I expect. Soon we'll be touching down in Johannesburg and then on to Cape Town. I don't know when exactly I shall be back in Uganda. I would like to return and perhaps take a trip to some of the national parks which seem to be mainly in the West of the country, along the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I would like to bring my family and introduce them to the "Pearl" and to some of the nicest, warmest people I have the privilege of calling my friends. Maybe, one day ...

Mozambique and Johannesburg

2011-10-19T09:13:00.001+02:00

Mozambique - September 2011

I am not sure how many times I have visited Moz. Somewhat less than ten times, somewhat more than five. About half of those have been trips to Maputo and about half have been trips through Maputo, to places further north. I find it a fascinating country, if a little depressing. My first trip was about five years ago. I went with a small team of south African academics to assist the Mozambiquean government with some short term training. We stayed at a modest hotel in downtown Maputo. It was a moderately successful trip, although the project we were training them for subsequently never happened, and I learned a few things in the process. One was about dress codes in Africa. Bottom line here is that whatever you wear will be wrong. I assumed that it being a government function, I should wear a suit. I arrived to find that everyone from their team was in jeans and tee-shirts! (I have had it the other way around as well, which is one reason I tend to err on the side of caution). The second thing I learned was how poor the country is or was. We tend to forget that our neighbor went through 16 years of brutal civil war, from which it is only now recovering. I don't pretend to know much about that war, other than what I have read and heard, but it is not difficult to see the effects of it - in short the infrastructure was (and still is) falling apart. My boss swears that when the Portuguese left in '75 or whenever, they were so pissed off that they poured concrete down the sewers. Maybe they did, maybe they didn't. It makes a good story and I guess I might have as well. Maputo certainly had and still has sewer problems...

I find that Maputo is a city of contrasts. On that first trip I remember taking a walk through the city centre and being astounded to find multimillion rand mansions belonging to some business tycoon or politician and right next to them open sewers, stinking to high heaven, or a ramshackle old house with broken windows and roof and yard rank with weeds. None of the traffic lights worked, it seemed. Major four-lane arterials intersected with other large roads and the intersection appeared to be nothing more than an elaborate stop-go system, whose rules it was almost impossible for the uninitiated to fathom. As far as I could see, the trick was to wait for a gap and then proceed slowly but purposefully as far as the first lane, wait for a gap in the second lane and so on until one had inched one's way all the way across. Even as that was happening, others were inching their way from east to west, west to east and south to north. The other remarkable thing was that I never saw an accident happen, although I don't doubt they occurred when I wasn't there.

This trip was short. we flew in on Monday and out on Thursday of the same week. All of Wednesday was taken up with a meeting and all of Tuesday with a trip to a field site some 100km to the north. So there wasn't much time for anything. We couldn't get on the direct Cape Town - Maputo flight and had to go via Johannesburg. We had one or two vaguely amusing incidents en route. I was in the company of the Handsome Masha, who is always good for a wry comment, usually socio-political in nature. There was a long queue at the passport control in Johannesburg airport - not a huge problem, as we had a fair amount of time before our connecting plane was due to leave, just mildly irritating. They had us snaking back in about five layers, for one immigration officer. That would probably have been fine but then another officer came, and the traffic director decided, in his wisdom, to re-engineer the "snake", with the result that about 20 of us were left in an island, not quite knowing where to head, and the rest in the main queue, wondering if we were about to gate crash them. Of course tempers got frayed, people argued, folks disobeyed instructions and climbed under the railing (I did) - it had the making of a good old mudsling. The turning point came when a South African white guy said rather loudly, "Well, welcome to Africa!" - an inflammatory remark at the best of time. The black guy behind him went off pop. Turned out he was Nigerian. He started screaming at him, "What gives you the right to say that? How can you say that? Nigeria is in Africa and this doesn't happen in Nigeria! We don't do things like this!!" The rest of us pretended to be British and discussed the weather or looked out the window.

Maputo has a new airport, built partly by the Chinese. Not sure how "partly". It is a modest airport by international standards, but certainly a huge amount better than the one they had before. I emerged from baggage reclaim and customs into a light, airy, spacious and surprisingly cool entrance hall and made my way to the three cash machines against the far wall. The first did not work. The second was out of money. The third had just swallowed an American gentleman's cash card. I retreated, deciding to rather wait for the hotel (which as it turned out didn't change money). There was a large and rather weird wooden sculpture in the arrivals hall which I photographed - maybe you can interpret it.

We stayed at the Hotel Avrin. It lies along the estuary, rather than the coast proper, surrounded by government ministries. As a hotel I guess it was above average - large rooms, most of the mod cons, marble everywhere, also lots of expensive looking paintings and sculptures, many of them African. The room rate was about R1000 for bed and breakfast, which always sounds like a great deal when you are having to pay it yourself, but internationally is nothing unusual. We found our rooms and agreed to meet later. Mine was on the second floor, facing the mouth of the estuary. I unpacked, showered and changed, and then went for a walk along the waterfront highway, with a friend. There was a light sea breeze, it was late afternoon and the sun was setting over the river, everywhere were sellers of cashews, crisps, cold drinks, beers (yes, on the pavement) ... young people everywhere, lots of rather lousy music blaring from parked cars' hi-fi's. But there was a festive atmosphere and we enjoyed the walk, ending at the ferry docking station.

Back at the hotel we met up with the Handsome Masha and one other colleague, and decided we would walk to the waterfront restaurant, where I had been on a previous trip and where I had had great seafood and listened to some wonderful African jazz music. The walk is about 10 minutes and we decided it would be fine. Wrong!

We had not gotten more than a block from the hotel and were just passing some or other ministry, when we were hailed by a soldier or policeman, I am not sure which. He wore a green uniform, had no name badge, but did have a large automatic weapon suspended over his shoulder. He asked to see our passports. Now I had never been told I must carry mine, and never had such problems in the past. In fact my practice is to put my passport straight into the room safe as soon as I have checked in, because the LAST thing I need when traveling is to lose my passport. So it turned out that one of us had a passport, two of use had drivers licenses and one had no identification. Three of us were South African and not required to have a visa and one was American, who had one. The soldier was not interested in the licenses - he wanted to see passports and he particularly wanted to see our American friend's visa. He would have to take us to the station, he said. We would need to pay a fine - I think he said 3000 meticals for each of us. That is about 1000 rands each - a lot of money. Well, if that was the law, then we would have to go to the station and pay up. I think we were resigned to that. And then he played his trump card - if we paid him, then it would be about half that and we wouldn't need to go to the station. Why didn't we just help each other? In other words he wanted a bribe. It is interesting to me that the three South Africans hesitated and looked like pushing back, despite the AK47. For one thing we didn't have the money on us. But on another level, I think we are just so bloody sick and tired of this sort of crap back home, that we weren't going to give in that easily, so we thought. Our American friend and colleague, on the other hand, reached into his wallet, found R500 and handed it over! The man's eyes lit up, but clearly he wanted more. He looked at me and asked why I didn't help my friend. I showed him my wallet which was genuinely empty - I intended using a credit card if I needed to pay for dinner. I don't know how long it would have gone on or where we would have ended up, had not another soldier approached from across the road. Quickly, the man's manner changed. "I am freeing you!" he said, with a certain amount of pomp and pretense at magnanimity. "My name is Rashid!" and he held out his hand to shake on it.

We were just glad to get out of there. I shook his hand and said "Thank you so much for your help, Rashid" and held off adding "You disgusting lowlife piece of shit!!", which was what I was thinking, and even managed a smile while I looked at him, all the while feeling only loathing and hate. I don't loathe and hate many people, but this man aroused in me those feelings in plenteous quantities. The others did likewise (shook hands that is) and we made our way slowly back to the hotel. I said to the American "I apologize for my continent!" "No problem," he said, "I have had far worse things happen to me in Washington, which is why I always carry enough money on me to pay a good bribe. That guy didn't know but if he had really pushed us I had 500 dollars hidden in my underpants!"

That night we ate in. We were one of only two parties in the hotel restaurant. The food was mediocre, the wine was from Chile and okay, and the prices were ridiculous. But at least we were safe. My American friend had not been to Maputo (or Lorenco Marques, as he called it), since the seventies. Mostly what he remembered were the prawns which were "as big as hot dogs!" and he was determined to find them again. That night the prawns were small - maybe an inch long. The next night we ate in the same hotel restaurant and they were maybe two inches long. It was only on the third night, when we finally succeeded in getting back to the Waterfront restaurant, that we got the real thing - three inch long tiger prawns. My friend thought he had died and gone to heaven! Had things worked out differently, that might have been truer than he wished.

I was awakened each morning by a rather tinny rendition of reveille played over the loudspeakers at the Ministry. Heaven only knew why. Presumably they were summoning the troops and running up the flag. Maybe they hadn't heard the war was over. Other than that, we didn't see the men in green again, not even on our trip up the N1, which is notorious for road blocks. I did speak to a Mozambiquean colleague, who happens to be well connected in the government, and he confirmed that no such law exists and that this fellow was simply chancing his arm. He also said that a night in a Mozambiquean jail is not something you want to court.

I don't want this to sound like a wholly negative blog about Mozambique because of one man's greed and immorality. The vast majority of my experiences in the country have been positive. Also, I know that many tourists have had far worse experiences in my own country. I have had friends and colleagues mugged in Paris, Rome ... you name it. Nowhere is immune, not even Saudi Arabia, I expect. I just mention these things because they kind of burst my bubble and altered somewhat my possibly naive, rose-tinted view of Africa. I shall be a little more careful in future, and carry my passport. I recounted this experience to my running partners yesterday, all of whom are South African, and they all said they would have called the soldier's bluff. well, they would wouldn't they - they didn't see his face or machine gun.

So that was Moz. I don't think anything else of importance happened. On Thursday we made our way back to the airport and via Joh’burg back to Cape Town. It was mildly irritating that no direct flight was available on either day and as a result our trip home took all day, whereas the direct flight takes a mere two hours.

Johannesburg – October 2011

Ten days later I was on a plane to Joh’burg for a 5 day "training" - I was being trained to train others, so called "train the trainer". The content of the course doesn't matter - it was OK, but a little tedious. It was all arranged pretty much at the last minute, I suspect because the Department suddenly discovered that it didn't have the required numbers. I flew up with some of the provincial program staff and my Cameroonian colleague, whom we affectionately refer to in the office as Lord Charles or Prince Charles, because he once let on that he has Royal Cameroonian blood. Charles is an academic physician and an accomplished researcher. He speaks not only his native Cameroonian language but English and French and something he calls "Pidgin English", which he says is spoken all over West Africa, but with regional differences. I asked him whether I, as a native English speaker, would be able to understand it and was told I would not.

We were booked into the Airport Grand Hotel, which one would think would be grand and near the airport. Well, it was not very Grand, and was near the nether end of the airport rather than the business end, if you take my meaning. The hotel is about 500 meters away from the south end of the eastern runway with some predictable and rather dramatic consequences. At peak hours, incoming planes come in low over the hotel before touching down. I found it fascinating to watch them, wheels down, listen to the engines throttling down, feel the walls and windows shake when the really big planes passed over, listen to the Doppler effect on the engine whine. I remember my Dad saying once that in London during the Second World War, they used to listen to the drone of the V2 rockets ("Doodlebugs"). As long as the engines kept whining they knew they were ok. It was when the engines stopped that they panicked. Once the rocket was overhead, they also relaxed, since even if the engines cut, it would continue going forward as it plummeted. Terrifying. But the planes, I found exciting. I even found a pub with an outside first floor deck called "High Fliers" from which one can "plane-watch" over a sundowner.

The hotel is officially in Boksburg, which is now part of the Ekurhuleni Metropole, what we used to call the East Rand in the bad old days of apartheid. I racked my brains to remember whether we had ever gone to Boksburg. I did remember that it was the site of the first Hypermarket. Imagine that - we would drive 50km to go to a Hypermarket! Nowadays I won't even drive ten. I bought my first and only Venter trailer from their depot in Boksburg. I spent an incredibly stressful and unhappy three weeks in 1989 as the medical officer assigned to the military detention barracks in Boksburg. Lastly, I do remember that when I was very young we used sometimes to drive out to the airport (called Jan Smuts Airport in those days), to watch, from the open air veranda, the planes landing and taking off. I think we saw the Concorde there when it visited, and the first Jumbo jets. Other than the above, I don't think I ever visited Boksburg. I mean why would I have? It was very Afrikaans, very flat and very ugly, in my opinion. "My" part of Johannesburg was hilly, leafy and pretty with blooming jacaranda trees and majestic old oaks.

The hotel, with the exception of the noise, was OK, as hotels go. Nothing more, nothing less. I must say the food was good and a little over the top. The only real negative was that there was no gym. There was a swimming pool in the central courtyard, but not big enough to get much exercise, and too cold anyway (I felt it). So I had a problem - the prospect of five full days of sitting listening to presentations, interspersed with meals which I really didn't need, but which I couldn't resist and which I felt morally obliged to eat since they had been paid for ... What to do? I had a look on Google maps and discovered that even though the hotel itself is on a main road and in something of a commercial and even industrial area, there is a residential suburb right behind it. I decided to throw caution tto the winds and go for a run on the first morning. At six a.m. I made my way past the security boom, clicked "start" on the Endomondo program of my Blackberry, clicked the start button on my running watch and set off at a good trot down the road, in the direction of the runway. After two blocks I turned right and ran along Viewpoint Road, which runs parallel to the R24 highway. I was surprised at the houses, several of which would not have been out of place in Houghton or Bishopscourt. The majority had, not unexpectedly, high walls or fences, topped by the ubiquitous electric wires, guarded by monstrously large dogs. But every so often, these were punctuated by old style small holdings, with low wire fences, lots of trees (plenty of syringa's in bloom, putting forth their pungent scent, but also palms and others), manor houses, some of them thatched, cheeky fox terriers poking their noses through the chicken wire... quite charming establishments in their own way, though one couldn't help wondering about security and how many times they had been burgled. Sad.
The sun was just rising. A few locals were out walking, singly or in pairs, some with dogs. Early birds were leaving for work. Diesel engines were idling at a trucking depot. The air was crisp but not cold. A peacock was calling from one of the small holdings. It was actually very pleasant and I found myself envying the worthy citizens of Boksburg their flat terrain and windless morning!
I was so happy with my run that my enthusiasm clearly affected Lord Charles. He went out that same afternoon and bought himself some running shoes at the East Rand Mall and the next morning he joined me on the run. Now His Excellency is new to running, and a little overweight, so we had to walk once or twice, but it was a good opportunity to chat and we both enjoyed it and made it a daily commitment for the rest of the week.

Other than that not a lot happened. Before we knew it, it was Friday and we were preparing to leave to return home to Cape Town. Would I go back to Boksburg if invited, or if I won a week there in a lottery - probably not, but hey, it was okay for a change.

Ezeebikes

2011-10-19T08:12:00.001+02:00

Ezeebikes

My kids are convinced I am having a midlife crisis. Perhaps they are right. I have probably spent more money in the last year than in the previous three. On the other hand, I thought midlife crises were supposed to be about Lamborghini cars or Harley Davidson motorbikes or Caribbean cruises. Mine has so far consisted of upgrading to a 40 inch flat screen television (my excuse was that I could no longer read the cricket and rugby scores from my arm chair, even with my spectacles on), having the house repainted inside and out (it needed it: Cape Town is not kind to paintwork), fitting new security gates to the front and back doors (hey, we live in South Africa), having new blinds fitted in the lounge and granny flat (the previous ones were see through at night) and having a shelving unit fitted in the computer room (we have four computer users and two desktop computers, so the space needed some organizing). Is that a crisis - I think that most of it could be classified as running repairs or simple maintenance.

Perhaps our one indulgence has been the bikes. We realized a while ago that with three drivers and soon four drivers, each with his or her own life to live, we would need to have more than two transport options. Currently we have the "small car" (Peugeot 107) and the "big car" (Hyundai Getz). What to do? Well we could buy another car, and we almost did. We even test drove an absolutely scrumptious Hyundai i20. Somewhere inside my rational self, however, something kept saying "sooner or later oil will run out or become so expensive you won't be able to afford petrol. Why on earth are you buying another fossil fuel burner? Go green, for heaven's sake (or at least for earth's sake)." So I started researching hybrids and electric cars. All very fascinating, but the bottom line seems to be that a hybrid car will cost me three times what I paid for the Peugeot and return a consumption figure not very different, and an electric car will set me back even more, and will not be available in South Africa for about 2 or 3 years. That doesn't help us. So we made do with two cars for a while and seemed to be getting on okay. Once in a while one of us would use public transport - not the most wonderful experience in Cape Town, but certainly a whole lot better than in most other parts of the country. Even so, the trains are unreliable, unclean and sometimes unsafe. On the positive side, they are relatively inexpensive.

Then I started thinking about criterion number two - the need for exercise, the ever present battle against the expanding waistline, the prospect of one's slaved-for retirement being obliterated or at least ruined by degenerative conditions like coronary artery disease, diabetes, osteoarthritis or, perish the thought, cancer. Fitting in the runs and gym sessions never gets easier. Who wants to go and work-out after a 10 hour stint in the office? Who wants to get up early in the morning for a run when you only finished your work after midnight the night before? Not me! But how about if getting to and from work were your exercise? Could that work? Well it might, the biggest caveats being Cape Town's weather (but the Dutch manage and their weather is absolutely dreadful) and the distance (I live about 30km from the office). Maybe riding 30km over a mountain pass at 5 pm after a hard day's work might not be the most attractive option imaginable...

These were the thoughts which were swirling around in the whirlpool I call my mind when I came across the Ezeebike website. The machines looked really interesting and the prices, though a good deal more than one would pay for a banger from Makro, were nothing like what I hear serious cyclists are paying for their steeds. They featured a story about two cyclists who had taken their Ezeebikes all the way from the Caprivi strip in northern Namibia to Cape Town, a distance of perhaps 3000km. Sounded enticing. On the spur of the moment I filled in the "contact me for a test ride" section and then forgot about it. A week or so later I got an email from a fellow in Blauuwbergstrand, inviting me to come and try one. Herself and I duly made the trip one fine Saturday afternoon. We were shown how to work the bikes and allowed to take a 20 minute ride around Big Bay, which is one of the prettier parts of Cape Town's northern suburbs. We were blown away! (not literally, I am happy to say). Two weeks later we proudly took delivery of two demonstration models - a "Sprint" for herself and a "Torq" for me.

Maybe I should explain how they work. Under the seat is a large battery. It makes up about a third of the price and quite a bit of the weight. You charge it from your domestic power supply and it takes about 4 hours if the battery is totally flat. On the handle bars is a little indicator which tells you how much charge you have - no numbers, just green, yellow or red - thankfully designed for the technically challenged amongst us. The right handle grip is the "throttle". If you switch on the motor and twist the grip, the bike leaps forward - you actually have to be quite careful. The motor itself is inside the front wheel hub. Don't ask how it works - it was explained to me and I think I understood at the time, but I have forgotten the details. I do know that it delivers a maximum of 250 watts which is enough to propel you at around 25kph on the flat if you don't pedal at all, but small enough that it doesn't need to be licensed as a motor vehicle. The range is said to be around 30km, but it obviously depends on the number of hills, how much you weigh, how much you pedal, the wind speed and direction, etc. All fairly simple and straightforward. Ezeebike are made in and imported from China, but are sold in Europe and the USA as well, as far as I understand.

My biggest frustration was that, having taken delivery of the bikes, we did not get a chance to ride them for at least a week. There was too much else going on, much of it rather tedious stuff. Eventually we decided that we would ride to Simonstown and back, a round trip of about 16km, on Saturday morning - we needed to be there for a soccer tournament which the princesses were playing in. Saturday dawned bright and reasonably fair. The forecast was for intermittent showers and a fresh westerly wind - the end of a cold front which had just passed through. We packed a bag with warm tops, apples, juices and the like, and set off. Central Fish Hoek is not terribly hilly, but there are some fairly challenging little slopes which can make for uncomfortable moments in the saddle. So imagine coming to one of them, and instead of having to change down to first gear and pedal hard, even stand on your pedals, you just carry on pedaling in the gear you are in, and turn the throttle far enough to allow you to do so. You hear a faint whine from the motor, you feel a surge of power like your father is pushing you on your first bike, and you smile beatifically as you whizz up the hill. Bliss! This is how cycling was supposed to be. No pain!

I won't bore you with a blow by blow account of every kilometer and gear change - it just got better and better. After the soccer, on the way home, we decided to ride over the Glen Cairn Expressway instead of just taking the coastal road straight back to Sunny Cove and Fish Hoek. I have both ridden and run up that hill. It is about 3km long and I guess you rise about 120m, (according to the trusty Endomondo, from 39m to 166m) so an average gradient of about 1:25, which may not sound like much but it is tough. Add to that a headwind. The long and short of it is at it was an absolute pleasure. I managed to maintain a speed of 20kph going up, with a fair bit of throttle, I admit, and felt exercised but not sore or exhausted when I arrived at the top. From there we had a gentle ride down into the Valley and so on to our home.

The next challenge is Boyes Drive and after that the ride to work and back. But one step at a time. For now I am happy to be an Ezeebiker and optimistic that I may have found a mode of transport which is green, healthy, cheap (relatively) and fun. I expect there may be a few more blogs on the subject coming ...

Another trip to the land of the brave and the free

2011-06-05T14:08:00.005+02:00

Sunday

I was almost forty years old before I left the African continent for the first time. It was a huge deal for me. I remember getting off the plane that first trip to Austria and walking out of Vienna airport, half expecting the ground below my feet would somehow feel different to what I was used to in good old South Africa. Of course it didn't.

Since then I have had the good or bad fortune to travel quite frequently and widely for business and occasionally leisure, including a good number of trips to the United States. So it is getting a little familiar now, though not too familiar - I still worry about their rather intimidating immigration control processes, wondering whether I will be the unlucky one to get on the wrong side of the officials and be selected out for an “interview”. It is getting easier, however, and I do genuinely enjoy visiting the US, Washington particularly, which almost feels like a second home to me now. I can negotiate the Metro, the Ride On bus system; even drive the beltway on the "wrong" side of the road if I have to.

This particular trip I had to attend a full-day meeting on a Wednesday, so decided to leave on a Sunday and return on a Saturday, giving me 3 full days there to do other things. So it was that herself dropped me off at Cape Town International Airport on a really foul Sunday afternoon, early enough that she would be able to get home and still have an afternoon nap before church. I checked my baggage and made my way through security. Instead of heading for the business lounge, my usual haunt, I went to Exclusive Books, since I had been sent a R15 voucher in the post which I was keen to redeem. I picked up a copy of Nelson Mandela's "Long Walk to Freedom", which I have for some reason never got around to reading, despite the fact that I greatly admire Mandela and the book has been around for over 15 years. It is a thick book, over 700 pages I think, which I thought wryly would stand (literally!) me in good stead for the queues I expected at Dulles airport.

I usually fly via Europe when I travel to the US but this time I decided to take the direct flight from Johannesburg to Washington. It isn't entirely correct to call it direct since it stops in Dakar, Senegal for a variable time, but at least one doesn't have to get off. In Johannesburg I spent a productive 30 minutes in the newly opened business lounge, which has been designed to be very African - I think it works quite well. The main thing is it is quiet and smoke free and has free wifi and fee wine and beer. I don't really care about the rest. We boarded rather early, but left on time. I found my window seat and got quite excited because when they closed the doors the seat next to me was still vacant, raising the possibility of a more comfortable trip. Alas, the occupant was chatting to a friend a few rows back and appeared in due course. Once we were airborne I ordered a Windhoek light and got stuck into my book - "Franny and Zooey" by JD Salinger - very interesting, but that is probably for another blog. Then dinner arrived - chicken or beef, or was it mutton or fish, I forget - whatever it was, it wasn't terribly palatable nor was that terribly unusual. One gets used to airline food, which I guess is bad. Dinner eaten and cleared away, I devoted myself to the iPad, first to write an email and then to read (Salinger finished) "Room with a view", by EM Forster, on the eBook reader I had downloaded, nice experience - just makes reading that much easier. And of course some nice music on the iPod program of the iPad. Really good - I like this toy.

The Johannesburg Washington flight is legendary - or should I say notorious? I expect there are longer flights or flight combinations but they cannot be much longer - not flights where one is confined to one aircraft continuously for a set amount of time, which in this case is anything from 18 to 19 hours, depending on how long they stop for in Dakar. In business class that may be survivable - in economy it is brutal. Add to that the fact that our aircraft was one of those old ones with just one TV screen for the whole cabin and one movie playing on it - you get my drift - not a terribly enjoyable experience. I think I'll go back to flying via Europe.

I should make mention of the Dakar stop because it really is rather odd. A few passengers get off and a few get on. That is not odd. What is odd is the security check. One is asked to remove one's baggage from the overhead locker and sit with it on one's lap. Not terribly comfortable but okay. Then these Senegalese guys come on and search the empty lockers. Wherever they find a vacant seat they also search the magazine rack and take up both cushions to look underneath. I guess they know what they are doing, just seems odd. You half expect them to bring on the sniffer dogs. Then the cleaners come on, and the new aircrews, and then you get underway again. Presumably they also refuel.

Monday

Eventually we arrived at Dulles. The last few hundred km were quite pleasant as we came in over Chesapeake Bay and made a wide arc over Maryland north of DC before crossing the Potomac just downriver of Point of Rocks and making our final approach to Dulles. It was exciting to pick out a few landmarks - I felt like I was in familiar territory. The cabin attendants had brought around a number of forms - green forms, white forms, blue forms. I showed my passport and was given a green form plus a blue customs form, both of which I dutifully filled in. We touched down around 11 a.m. in sunny, clear weather with little fuss and taxied to our bay - it seemed fairly quiet. We alighted, or "deplaned" as the Americans love to say (they also say "detrained" on the Amtrak, which had amused us) and made our way along passages and up and down escalators, rode in a mobile lounge and finally arrived in passport control. Now last time I was here the queues were about 10 "layers" deep on the "non US citizen" side and it literally took me 2 hours to get through, so that was what I was expecting. I was delighted and somewhat flabbergasted to find, therefore, only about 12 people ahead of me in the queue. An officer checked my passport and asked me whether I had completed an ESTA application electronically (which I had) - "Then you don't need the green form" he said. Okay - live and learn. It would be nice if they all sang from the same hymnbook. The officer at the booth was an attractive women in her twenties, I would say, who asked me a few questions and let me through - what a pleasure, and what a difference. Someone must have given them all a public relations course since I last visited. Maybe I was just in a better frame of mind.

I found my baggage, cleared customs (again, a casual wave of the official's hand) and exited to the departure hall. I found the Supershuttle desk and got a ticket from a young man who couldn't have looked less interested or more bored if his life had depended on it. "Where'r ya goin'?" he drawled. "Hilton Garden Inn Shady Grove Road Rockville - Gaithersburg" I read from my cell phone calendar. He punched something into his computer and informed me that I owed him $30. I gave him my credit card to swipe. He told me I needed to find van 139 which would be outside and to the right. I lugged my bags outside into the blistering midday sun and found the van, but there was no driver. I looked at my ticket. "Hilton, Rockville". Now if you know Rockville you will know that the two are about 5km apart, too far to walk and inconvenient to take the bus with baggage. Besides I had paid. By this stage the driver had appeared: a short, squat guy who looked Chinese, or at any rate Oriental. I explained the situation. "Gaithersburg more money," he said, "you need to change". So I lugged my stuff back in the heat to the disinterested young man who was unrepentant and unapologetic, averring that it all cost the same anyway. Back to the driver who received the news badly and looked like he was about to have a fit or a stroke or both. But by this stage I was gatvol, to use a good Afrikaans word. I gave him the ticket and told him to go and sort it out, which I am glad to say he did. Five baking minutes later he re-appeared and said it was ok, he would take me, no extra charge. I climbed into the air-conditioned van thankfully. A few minutes later we were on the highway heading for the beltway and Washington. We crossed the Potomac, made a stop on Wisconsin Avenue near Pook’s Hill, a name which always amused us when we lived there, and then headed up the I-270 towards Rockville. He found the hotel without much trouble. I asked him to wait while I went in and drew some dollars so that I could give him a tip. $40 including the tip is pretty good, considering it must be about 40km from the airport to the hotel. I have paid a lot more than that in New York and elsewhere. Even in Cape Town it would cost more than that I suspect. Supershuttle offers a good service even if some of their more junior staff members do need a stick of dynamite up their backsides.

My room was on the 6th floor, facing Shady Grove Road, looking north I guess. I settled in, figured out the Internet, caught up some emails, spoke to herself on Skype and had a shower. The temptation was to sleep, but I wanted to try a new jetlag strategy so I resisted it and instead took a walk down to Research Boulevard where I knew there is a Citibank branch - I needed to see them about getting a new card. Of course, I had forgotten it was a holiday (Memorial Day) and so the bank was closed, but it was a pleasant, if rather hot, walk, part of it along the Rockville Millennium Trail with its notice to "Beware of coyotes", which I remembered from before - not entirely sure whether to be alarmed or amused by it. On the banks of a small dam I passed, I saw an animal about the size of a small dog swimming, then clambering out onto the bank and running through the long grass and undergrowth - I assumed it must have been an otter.

Bank being closed and it being only about 3 pm I decided to walk up Research Boulevard to Washingtonian Boulevard where I knew there were some restaurants and shops. It was seriously hot and humid and I was wearing jeans, but it wasn't unpleasant and I needed the exercise after the long flight anyway. I took a slight detour at the top of Research Boulevard which took me around a dam where I encountered a flock of Canadian geese with goslings. Someone had warned me that they can be aggressive when with young so I kept my distance and just took a couple of pictures. Even that occasioned a few hisses. I also had to negotiate a large open field, which struck me as odd in the middle of suburbia but it was evident that they are in the process of turning it into more townhouses anyway. Pity - it was rather nice.

Washingtonian Boulevard is essentially a string of hotels and shops which runs parallel to the I-270 freeway. Between the two they have created a lake and boardwalk which is quite pleasant. I visited a few shops - Dick's sports I remembered from our time there, a huge sports shop where you can get just about anything. They had a lot of Redskins gear on sale (the local football team), but being proprietary branded stuff it was still expensive - $60 for a shirt, etc. I passed. I stopped by Barnes and Noble books, which is a great US institution, and picked up a gift for some American friends who have just had a baby and whose parents I would be seeing the next day. Then I wandered down to the Californian Pizza Kitchen and found myself a table on the verandah overlooking the lake and boardwalk. I ordered a Sam Adams beer and a mushroom pizza, and settled back to watch the crowds. People drifted past. I must say that most of them appeared to be overweight, some morbidly so, but every so often there was one in trainers and gym gear who looked like he wasn't about to have a coronary. They have a little train and carriages which trundles past every few minutes with its cargo of young kids and their parents, driven by a very bored looking guy. Well, I would be too, but I guess it is a job. On the lake, pedal-powered duck-shaped boats moved slowly back and forward, generally with Mom and Dad pedaling and the kids telling them to pedal faster or go this way or chase that goose. It was a nice picture of family life, blissful or otherwise. Washington is extremely cosmopolitan, and I saw what seemed like the United Nations pass before me in one afternoon, an aspect of the city which I always enjoy - we never felt out of place there, because there were so many others who like us we not native Americans. I suspect it might not have quite been the case if we had been in a city in the mid-West, say.

By the time my pizza arrived I had finished my beer, so I ordered another one - in retrospect probably not a great idea given that I was sleep deprived and a little dehydrated, possibly hypoglycemic but there you are - I was thirsty and the beer was good. By the time I left I was full - it was a good pizza - and a little light headed. I paid the bill ($25) and walked slowly back to the hotel. By this stage it was getting on for evening and though still very warm, it was no longer oppressive and I enjoyed the walk, which took me about half an hour, more. I discovered that right next to my hotel was a small shopping centre which sported a Starbucks, a Panera's and a Chipotle's as well as a few other outlets. I picked up half a dozen bagels and headed for my room. I took a short swim in the hotel's heated pool (would actually have appreciated it more if it had not been heated) and Jacuzzi, then did a bit more work, but by 9 pm could no longer keep my eyes open so turned in. I did wake at 12, and every hour thereafter till I finally got up at 6 but the difference was that I went back to sleep and didn't lie in bed for hours feeling like I had just had 3 double espresso's. I think my plan worked.

Tuesday

Breakfast was a fairly conventional affair. The hotel dining room had the grand name of The Great American Grill, but was really just a breakfast nook with a kitchen. I avoided the cooked menu and had some fruit, cereal, a bagel with Philadelphia cream cheese and a cup of coffee, which was more than enough for me. Then I retired to my room to catch up on a truckload of work, emerging around noon. I had a meeting at George Washington University at 3 and still needed to get to the bank so I repeated the walk of the day before. This time the bank was open and they were able to sort out my card issue. I must comment that my experience of US banks is very positive. Compared to their counterparts in SA, they are highly efficient, customer friendly and cheap. I was told that I could pick up my card the next day after noon. Now that is good service, I think. Also they routinely stay open till 5 pm. I then took the 54 Ride on bus to Rockville station. I wasn't sure what the fare was but imagined it would still be less than $2 - the driver said $1.70 I think. The machine swallowed my bills and didn't give me change. OK. No problem - I can spare 30 cents for Montgomery County. I had a smart card for the metro but it didn't have any money on it. I had to top it up at Rockville station. The metro trip would cost $3, as it was off-peak. That is quite a bit more than one would pay in Cape Town (about $1) but the service is better - cleaner, faster, safer, more comfortable, more convenient. I love the Washington metro - I can see that riding it every day, one might become blasé about it, but as with flying, I am amazed afresh every time I take it at the engineering masterpiece that it is.

I had a bit of time to kill so instead of going straight to Foggy Bottom / GWU, I got off at Metro Centre and took the Orange Line to Smithsonian, the exit of which is in the National Mall, between the Capitol Building and the Washington Monument, right next to the Smithsonian Castle. For some reason I took the wrong exit (most metro stations have 2 which are sometimes quite far apart) and came out a little way from the mall. Making my way back to the mall, I passed through an attractive garden, named after someone whose name I forget, but right next to it I noticed the rather modest, unobtrusive Museum of African Art and decided to have a look. Most of Washington's (very fine) museums are free to visit, as was this one. I am not sure what I expected but the exhibits were delightful and I spent a happy hour learning about African art, mainly West African I must say. At the museum shop, I bought myself a rather gaudy bag which came from Rwanda, from some AIDS orphans project there. Then it was time to go, so I made my way back down to the metro station and caught the orange line train to Vienna, getting off at Foggy Bottom, which is right at GWU.

After our meetings we went for dinner at a restaurant in Bethesda. I forget the name of the place, but it was on Wisconsin Avenue. I ordered scallops, more because I had never had them than for any other reason. They were ... umm ... chewy. Not unpleasant, but I don't think I'd go for them again. The calamari starter was good though. Our waiter was a large fellow who had altogether too much to say and not a lot of etiquette. The final straw was when he came by with the dirty dishes from another table in his right hand. Properly wishing to avoid talking to us while holding dirty dishes under our noses, he held the plates aloft while he prattled on about the qualities of the crème brûlée or whatever, but the result was that we had a conversation with his sweaty right armpit for a few excruciating minutes. Strike three. Don't think he got much of a tip (I didn't pay).

After dinner I took the metro back to Rockville station, the 54 bus back up to Shady Grove Road and walked the short distance back to my hotel. Everything worked like clockwork, which is how America generally is, in my experience. It is a welcome change to be able to take public transport at night and walk in the streets without much concern about being mugged, gang raped or murdered.

The whole of Wednesday was taken up by a meeting which was, well ... a meeting. A necessary evil I guess. Afterwards, I went home with a friend who lives in Virginia, about 30 km from my hotel. The original plan had been just to go for dinner, but it seemed to make sense to stay over and come in with him the next day. My friend is in his 60's and the last of his 7 kids has just graduated from college, so he is having, by his own admission, a delayed midlife crisis. His cars have always been what could best be described as functional - four wheel drive Subaru's and the like, usually unwashed and definitely unpolished, which he needed for getting up and down the very long unpaved driveway at his semi rural estate. His midlife crisis car, on the other hand, is far more than functional - he bought himself a top of the range 5 liter Mercedes 2-door convertible which is just ... beautiful, raw power, driving pleasure. We headed out along route 28 towards Point of Rocks and Virginia, and I could see that this was something he enjoyed. The one hour each way commute was far more than a tedious daily necessity: in this car it was an adventure. He showed me some of the features - the radar which keeps you a set distance from the car ahead, the roll bar which pops up should the wheels leave the ground. Just amazing.

We didn't go straight to his home - he took me over some back roads and showed me the abodes of some of his neighbors - worthy Virginian law-abiding folks, if wealthy ones. Loudon County is the wealthiest of Virginia's more than 50 counties, I was told.

We arrived at his house and were met by his lovely wife and the one daughter who still currently lives at home. I was shown my room, dumped my stuff, and we then headed off to dinner, which was to be in Lovettsville, a nearby village with 2 restaurants, of which we chose one. I forget the name but it was in a converted one storey house. I ordered a mushroom pasta dish, which was excellent, and we washed down our food with a great local Chardonnay called Chrysalis. I had chocolate crème brûlée for desert which was also excellent. We drove back through another village and over some different untarred roads - all very pretty and I found myself thinking that I could be happy here. It had wholesomeness to it, if a rather expensive feeling wholesomeness. Some of the estates are horse breeding estates. My friend assured me that one of them even has its own race track. I decided to have a lie down when we got back and basically passed out for the night, getting up in the small hours to get out of my work clothes and into my pajamas. Must have been really tired, and the wine no doubt helped.

Thursday

Next morning I was up early and showered. The sun wasn't up yet, but it was light so I took a walk up the drive and along one or two of the roads. There was a cool predawn wind blowing in, the birds were calling and it was really pretty. American flags flapped lazily in every second garden - a habit I still can't quite get used to. The sun rose over a low ridge, lighting up the houses and trees. Just lovely. My friend called me on my mobile to tell me that breakfast was ready. I don't normally eat much breakfast but he had prepared it specially. We sat on his patio and ate what he called a traditional Southern breakfast. It consisted of Quaker grits (like what we call mielie pap), Smithfield ham (the pigs are evidently fed on peanuts and this gives the ham a certain flavor) and "red eye gravy". Of course I asked about the origin of the name. He said it is disputed. Some say it is because one makes it with coffee which contains caffeine and keeps you awake, thus the red eye. The other theory is that if you put it in an oval gravy boat and leave it to cool, the way the fatty and watery layers separate characteristically has the appearance of a reddish eye. Whatever. It was pleasant. Again, not sure I would go out of my way to source it, order or eat it again, but it is always nice, I think, to experience local cuisine, local wines and local beers, and learn something about them, rather than just eating and drinking the expected. I enjoyed it.

Then it was another adventurous ride back to the hotel in the "beast". We stopped off at a small general dealer and gas station where the beast consumed $64 of gas. That is 16 gallons/ 64 liters at current prices, almost twice the capacity of the tank of my little Peugeot 107, and he told me a full tank is 20 gallons. I could see this was not a cheap car to run. The tyres looked like they cost a good few hundred dollars each and we won't talk about repairs and insurance. But hey, he loves it and he has worked long and hard to get it.

Back at the hotel, I used the few free hours to catch up on emails, then met another friend for lunch at one of the local restaurants. I hadn't seen him for a few years and it was good to catch up. I had a swordfish kebab and he had the beef, with a pita bread and hummus starter and diet Pepsi to wash it down. He dropped me off at Shady Grove station and I caught the metro through to Dupont Circle in DC, where my next meeting was. This is the older part of DC and there are some very beautiful colonial style houses in the area, also so called "embassy row" quite nearby, which is largely same olde houses converted into embassies, South Africa's amongst them. I had an hour to kill before my meeting at 4 so walked down "P" Street (sic), to what I thought was Rock Creek Park, but turned out to be Rock Creek Parkway - they have built the arterial road right up the creek, so to speak - well I guess they had to put it somewhere. So no park. I found a bottle store and picked up a bottle of Nederburg Pinotage for $12.95, the only bottle of South African wine in the shop - at least it is a halfway decent example of what we are capable of producing. That is also not a bad price - we wouldn't pay much less for it in Cape Town or even at the Nederburg estate, I don't think. I also popped into CVS pharmacy for some odds and ends, and Panera's for 2 chocolate brownies. I found the building where I had a meeting scheduled with (another) friend and colleague and managed to get past their rather overzealous security. My friend duly appeared and I presented her with the brownies - she had just come off her third teleconference for the day and I thought she needed resuscitation. She gratefully accepted and we made for the office kitchen where we brewed some fresh coffee and ate our brownies, while she caught me up on her job and we discussed possible areas of overlap and opportunities for working together. Then we got in her car and headed for her place in Falls Church, Virginia.

We stopped off at a deli near her house. "Do you eat Lebanese?" she asked. "I eat just about anything except Brussels sprouts," I assured her, which is true. Okay, I don't do brains or eyes or tripe, but I have eaten Mopani worms, which is more than most umlungu's can say, and liked them. She asked me if I would like to choose from what they had on offer. It all looked good, but unfamiliar, so I said I would trust her judgment and asked her to choose.

We got to her house, a modest double storey semi-detached in a quiet cul de sac, opened a bottle of Virginia white (it was still quite hot outside), sat out on the patio and chatted while we waited for her husband to arrive home. He is a physicist who does work for the CIA or FBI or something, so that was one avenue of polite conversation which wasn't going to be open. Fortunately he is a really easy going guy and he has also just acquired an iPad, so there was lots else to talk about. The food was excellent - will certainly do Lebanese again if I get the chance. My friend, who has lived in Saudi Arabia, tells me that Lebanese is by far the best cuisine in the Middle East. Before we knew it, it was 9.30. My friend was kind enough to drive me back to my hotel, saving me a long metro trip (orange line then red line) and bus trip (if the buses were still running, otherwise a very long walk from Rockville Station). It had been a long day, and I was grateful to flop down on my bed in front of the TV and drift off.

Friday

I had arranged to be picked up from my hotel at 7.30 so was up at 5 getting my stuff together. By 7 I was downstairs for my last hotel breakfast and by 7.30 I was outside waiting. The temperature had dropped a good few degrees and it was really pleasant - very slight breeze, lovely and mild. My friend and his wife (different friend) arrived and I got into his Mercedes 4 by 4 amidst lots of "How ARE you's". Our experience when we lived in the US was that "How ARE you?" generally means "Hello" rather than actually being a question about your wellbeing. With these particularly friends, however, it really did mean "How are you?" and not only how are you but how is herself and princess firstborn and princess second-born, all of whom they had known and come to like. It was a joyful reunion.

The rest of the morning was filled with a number of similar reunions, people I had worked with and become friends with, who for one reason or another have ended up working for one particular company. One of them was kind enough to take me down to the mall, where I bought the required 2 boxes of chocolate brownie premix and some t-shirts for the princesses. We lunched at Panera's, which still makes an excellent ham sandwich, I am happy to report. I bought a baker’s dozen assorted bagels for herself. Then one of them drove me to Dulles - not a small favor, I should add, given that it is about 40 km on busy freeways and he would need to come back to the office before going home. They really are incredibly hospitable people.

So it was that I ended up back at Dulles. Before I checked in I had to buy another suitcase - what with the bagels and all, I couldn't fit everything in the bag I had brought. Never learn! I found one and also bought myself a neck support for the plane. I suspect that I didn't get the greatest deal on the suitcase, but they didn't have a huge selection of shops, or of goods within the shops. In fact I got the impression that all the shops were one chain, since the cases and prices were identical. Closed shop, so to speak - I thought such practices would be illegal in the US, of all places. Whatever. Bought one and stuffed everything in it, including the bagels, then checked it in, to be told that my cabin luggage weighed 10kg and should only be 8kg, but that it was ok. Well if it is ok, why bother telling me? Passport control and security were tedious, but no more tedious than at other large international airports, and the staff were friendly enough, even if they were quite obviously deadly serious about their jobs.

I took the connecting underground train to terminal A and found gate A15. There were already passengers waiting, despite the fact that it was a good hour before boarding time. I wandered up the terminal's central passage looking at the shops. There was a memorabilia shop called America or Americana or something. Some of it was fairly inflammatory and I couldn't see myself wearing it in Cape Town - t-shirts reading "justice done!" and something about the Navy seals who killed bin Laden. That would go down really well in the bo-Kaap, I don't think! But there was good stuff as well. I settled on two metal name plates for the princesses made to look like US number plates (which are far more interesting than South African ones). Then I bought a bagel and jelly for $1.99, finishing my US currency, and went and sat at the gate, reading my "Long Walk". It had been a long walk, but not as long as his!

We boarded early and took off on time - there was a queue of seven aircraft waiting to take off. Finally it was our turn. One thing about big airliners is that they seem to be able to get airborne without it feeling as though they are about to fall to pieces. We just effortlessly glided down the runway and eased up into the airspace over Virginia, then out over Maryland and Delaware and soon there was just the blue expanse of the Atlantic below. Goodbye America, for now anyway. Stay well. Salani kahle.

Saturday

Of course one doesn't just leave the US - it takes a while to get back to Africa - a long while if you're talking about South Africa. Seventeen hours and counting, I am still confined in seat number 37K, but the view from the window has admittedly changed some. Now it is the dry expanses of Namibia which grace my portal. I cannot see well enough to distinguish vacant land from settled land at this altitude, but it wouldn't really surprise me if there are no settlements at all in the expanse of Africa I am looking at and therein lies the difference. You would struggle to find a vista like this in the US, certainly on the East coast. Soon we shall touchdown in Johannesburg, then I shall fly on to Cape Town, my lovely family, and our own wonderful bed, which has served us well these many years and still beats any hotel bed that I have ever slept on. Enough for now - adventures are fine but should be rationed. A bit of normality every now and then will be welcome.

A site familiar to any Washingtonian ... the Metro.

The Capitol building and the National Mall

A rather fine horse and rider in the Museum of African Art,

from Mali, I think they said 16th Century

Rural Virginian sunrise

It certainly looks peaceful ...

Local Elections 2011

2011-05-22T16:54:00.005+02:00

Between 22 April and 18 May 2011 we had four public holidays. This sort of thing makes my US colleagues very envious, a little angry and most of all, somewhat suspicious - like we're pulling the wool or taking the piss. But we aren't - they just happened. And the last was the best because it was a Wednesday - I love Wednesday holidays because you can get a lot done on Monday and Tuesday, have a good break on Wednesday and then put in a good spurt again before the weekend. I think there is a good case for making them a permanent feature of our monthly calendar. Down with 5 day weeks, say !. Of course we all work through our holidays and weekends anyway, but that is beside the point - at least we can do it from the comfort of our bedrooms.

Wednesday was Local Elections 2011 voting day. I have lost track of elections but I guess there was one in 2006, 2001 and 1996. I don't remember 1996 - we must have been in KZN. Maybe we voted. The princesses would have been very young. One of the others I missed because my ID document had gone missing, presumed stolen (actually turned out I had misplaced it). 17 years after the advent of democracy in SA we still get sufficiently excited about voting to at least make it down to the Civic Centre to make our crosses. Well, I do anyway. And two thirds of Cape Town did this year as well. Political talk dominated our coffee machine social circle and the airwaves for a couple of weeks before the big day, so we were well primed. I was disappointed that no-one phoned or came round to ask me to vote for their party. Maybe they did and we just weren't in.

The day before the elections I went onto the IEC website to check that I was registered. I was, as was herself. I also downloaded and printed the list of candidates for the ward vote and the list of parties for the proportional representation vote. That was a shock. I had never heard of any of the candidates and I had never heard of at least half the parties. My fault I guess - should have attended those meetings, read those articles and listened to those programs. The result was that by the time I got to the polling station I hadn't altogether made up my mind whom to vote for.

The morning dawned bright and beautiful. We took full advantage and got in a lie-in, and a morning gym session before heading for the booths along with Princess Firstborn - her first vote. There was a fairly lengthy queue of people but it appeared to be moving and everyone seemed to be in a tolerably good mood with one or two noticeable exceptions - the tall fellow with dreadlocks who was manning one of the party tables looked like he had dropped a 100 rand note and picked up half a cent, and a lady who had failed to register and was now trying to make it the problem of the electoral officer.

We shuffled forward slowly, enjoying the sunshine and the vibe. A very old lady came out, helped by a nurse and we moved aside to let her through. "Thank you", she said. "Thank you", I returned, "for taking the trouble to come out and vote". "Young man", she said, "at my age, my vote is worth a million rands!" Couldn't quite follow the logic of that but I said "Good for you!" anyway.

A car drew up with an elderly couple in the back seat. The driver got out and opened the door - he was presumably a younger friend or relative. Mr Dreadlocks immediately sprang into action and started moving them towards the front of the queue. The driver said something about "You'll have to fight to get them to the front" to which he replied loudly "No problem, I've been fighting for liberation my whole bloody life". He looked about 25! And the point was that noone there would so much as thought of not letting them jump the queue. Idiot. Well that made my mind up - I voted for the other party.

The princess was a little overawed by the occasion. Not sure what she expected - tick the wrong box and the men in masks spring out and carry you away? The staff were all very friendly and helpful and very soon we were in the booths and making our marks, placing our papers in the boxes and leaving the station. My vote was one in a million cast in the province, I believe. So you could say it didn't matter. It certainly wouldn't have mattered in my ward, where the winning candidate got 92% of the vote, if I had stayed in bed. In a way, one votes mainly for one's own benefit - one gives oneself the right to crticise the government of the day, if one has participated in the election. If one hasn't, one should shut up. At least, that is my view.

Civic duty done for another 3 years - I went back to bed. When the results came out I emailed the Handsome Masha to ask how his "Trotskyist End Necrophilia Party" had done - he said they had been too poor to stand, but next time ...

Safari 2011

2011-05-14T23:31:00.005+02:00

Normally the 2 Oceans and the Safari are about 4 weeks apart - the former is always on Easter Saturday and the latter on the Workers' Day (1st May) weekend Saturday. This year Easter Saturday fell on April 23rd and this meant that there were just 9 days between the two races, since they shifted the Safari to the 2nd May, which was a public holiday. No problem I thought. Silly me.

I arranged to collect the Handsome Masha at 5 since it was a good hour's drive to Wellington, where the race was being held. I got lost trying to find his house in Plumstead - the street names are small and illegible, and I didn't have my glasses on. Finally found it a little after five, which meant that by the time he got into the car I had heard the 5 a.m. news bulletin - Osama bin Laden had been killed by US forces. I guess it is one of those things one will always remember - I remember exactly where I was (driving back from Worcester on the N1 near Bellville) when I first heard news of the 9/11 terrorism. The Masha hadn't heard so we discussed the implications for a while as we headed north and then north east to Wellington. He has Islamic routes but is not a practicing Muslim and his views are normally a good mix of politics, philosophy and religion, which I find useful.We decided that OBL's death was probably not great news, given the likely reprisals on countless innocent people, not to mention travel delays to people such as us!

For once I took the right turnoff from the N1 (the R44) and before we knew it we were there. Well, in Wellington anyway. The trick is then to find parking which is reasonably close to the stadium. We finally opted for a recreation park. I was worreid about getting out so tried to squeeze the car (which isn't very large) into a space up on the perimeter, an action which elicited a rather loud (as in meant to be heard) and sarky comment from the fellow standing next to the car alongside of "Moenie worry as hy jou motor scrape nie - dis niksnie!" (Don't worry if he scrapes your car - it's nothing). I got the hint and moved along about ten spaces, till I found another (better) spot next to a park bench also on the perimeter. We arranged to meet at the bench after the race.

Then it was a careful application of "glide" to the inner thighs, get the chest strap, earphones, Blackberry and pouch sorted out, check and double check that the car was locked and head for the start, along with a gazillion others. We passed a number of portable toilets, each with an accompanying long queue. By the time we got to the start, I needed a loo myself, having had a cup of coffee en route. There appeared to be about 10 cubicles and around 30 people in the queue. This can't take too long, I thought. Well it did! The queue crawled along. I had lots of time to spare but it really was tedious. We had finally made it to just about the front when a friend of the bloke in front of me in the queue approached and informed us that this queue was for the ladies' toilet - the men's was "over there" and there was no queue since it was a "standing arrangement". Which it was - very quick, in and out. There are definitely some advantages to being male, even if one cannot multitask.

The race was ... well it was a pretty normal half marathon - usual frustrations, usual challenges. I was doing pretty well until around 13km despite some ups and down, with laps all under 6.30, many under 6 minutes (which is good for me). One then climbs about 100m in the space of around 4km, and my lap times went south - all over 6.30, some over 7, one over 8. One then drops those same 100m altitude in the final 4km, but by that stage I felt so stuffed that the best I could do was keep up a 6.30 so eventually clocked in at 2:18, just slower than my 2 Oceans (despite the quicker start). So not a great race - just ran out of energy.

On the other hand the race had many positives. I really enjoyed listening to Eagles, Elton John and Mannfred Mann while I ran. Not sure if it slowed me down or sped me up but it made it more enjoyable. I enjoyed the countryside, which really is lovely, with the farms around you the and mountains above and in the distance, the smells of woodfires, but also of cattle manure and once or twice things cooking. The little kids at the side of the road shouting "Hou bene hou! Hou bene hou!" which I guess is best translated as "Keep going legs, keep going". A female prison warder as we passed the Wellington prison, who spotted a colleague (I presumed) running, let out a loud shriek and careered after him, caught him up and fondly slapped him across the back of the head - he didn't seem to mind. She was rather large and very loud. And herself phoning me at around the 13km mark to ask if I was OK - that was a first. In-between puffs and gasps I managed to get out that I was.

The finish line eventually appeared and I gratefully accepted my medal and Pepsi and phoned herself to let her know that I was still alive and that she should hold off with the funeral arrangements. I made the mistake of sitting down on the grass to recover and very nearly couldn't get up again. I watched the runners and walkers coming in - some looked happy, some looked in pain, some just looked blank - I expect I looked like that. I didn't spot the Masha so made my way back to the car and had just got comfortable on the bench (Masha had the keys) when I heard a familiar voice say rather loudly "Now who's f**king crazy idea was it to run this race? Must have been yours!" - the Handsome Masha had returned.

We compared times, commiserated with each other about the toughness of the event and decided to head home. I somehow managed to fold my rigor mortis like legs into the car and we set off. It was not a comfortable journey but we made it home OK, just in time to go out again for herself's birthday lunch. Fortaunetly, P:rincess Firstborn now has a drivers licence, so I handed her the keys, got into the back with herself and pretended to be Prince William - ride on, James!

I think next year I may skip the Safari. Nice race but just wasn't ready for it.

Title	Safari
Sport	Running
Start Time	May 2, 2011 7:13 AM
Distance	21.23 km
Duration	2h:18m:23s
Avg Speed	6:31 min/km
Max Speed	4:36 min/km
Calories	1797 kcal
Altitude	147 m / 256 m
Elevation	121 m ↑ / 121 m ↓
Heart Rate	- / -

Invictus

2011-05-14T22:39:00.001+02:00

Tonight they showed the movie "Invictus" on MNET. I had heard a fair bit about it - it has been out 2 years already - but had not seen it, so I was rather pleased that I had the opportunity - a cool, rather miserable night, so an excuse for soup and rolls and a couple of glasses of pinotage in front of the gas heater, and what better to do than to watch a nice feelgood movie, with a great director (Clint Eastwood) and actors of the caliber of Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon. I knew the basic plot about it being built around the unlikely alliance between our ex-president Nelson Mandela (then president) and our ex-Springbok rugby captain Francois Pienaar. In fact I remember quite clearly the final match which is also the climax of the film - I was mowing my lawn and could hear the roars of my next door neighbours who were big rugby fans erupting every few minutes. I played rugby at school, and enjoy watching the game, but for me it has never been a religion or a matter of life and death, the way it appears to be for many of my white South African friends and colleagues.

So the story wasn't new to me, although I enjoyed it anyway. I liked the clever way Eastwood tries to show how playing in and winning the cup had brought black and white South Africans together - little touches like the mixed security detail celebrating together, black fans gathering in a township shabeen to watch, white "madams" and black domestic workers hugging each other, and the best one, a white policeman dancing around in jubilation with a black street kid on his shoulders, after he had earlier told him to "Voetsak! Hamba!" for supposed loitering - all very moving and I guess even possibly true.

What I didn't know about was the poem Invictus, which is of course central to the story. Mandela tells Pienaar that he used often to read or recite it during his days in prison on Robben Island, when things were really bad. He then writes it out for Pienaar and gives it to him the day before the big match against Australia. They win the macth and the day after they are taken to visit Robben Island, and in particular the (very small) cell which was Mandela's home for so many lonely years - a visit which makes a huge impact on Pienaar.

I looked the poem up - turns out (according to Wikipedia) it was written by the English poet William Ernest Henley (1849–1903). "At the age of 12, Henley fell victim to tuberculosis of the bone. A few years later, the disease progressed to his foot, and physicians announced that the only way to save his life was to amputate directly below the knee. It was amputated when he was 17. In 1875, the Stoic ideal of indifference in the face of suffering inspired Henley to write his poem from a hospital bed. Despite his disability, he survived with one foot intact and led an active life until his death at the age of 53."

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gait,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.

I am no judge of poetry. It is certainly better verse than I have ever written. Yet I find the assertion of invincibility worrying - I wonder whether true greatness does not lie in accepting and working around one's limitations, rather than deluding oneself that one has none. What I do like is the message in the last 2 lines - a message we could all profit from hearing in South Africa today, when half the population blames the old regime and the other half the new regime for whatever troubles us - a little acceptance of responsibility for making things work might go a long way.

The final scene is both meaningful and moving. Mandela presents the trophy to Pienaar, the winning captain and they shake hands and look one another in the eye. "Thank you, Francois, for what you have done for our country", he says. "No, sir", says Pienaar, "thank You, for what You have done for our country!" Valour recognising greater valour, I guess. Pienaar was a great rugby player, probably a great captain, possibly a great man. But he isn't in Mandela's league and I expect he would be the first to admit that.

The movie had another effect on me - it reawakened in me some of the old idealism which propelled me in my twenties to work long hours with poor black patients in some of the most remote rural hospitals of the country for not very much pay. I resolved to read some of Madiba's writings - maybe they will inspire me to reclaim that vision and get back to a bit of nation building.

2 Oceans time again …

2011-04-29T23:53:00.001+02:00

2 Oceans time again …

No blog since Stockholm. Well, not much has happened, apart from having my external hard drive stolen out of my “sky-checked” backpack on an SA express flight coming back from George – be warned! What else? Oh, summer seems to have finally shuffled off and winter has arrived – Capetonians are running for cover as the temperatures plummet to below 15 degrees Celsius! – we are such a bunch of wimps!! The heaters are out, the winter duvets are on the beds, we are moaning twice as long and thrice as loud about getting up in the morning…

And it is Easter. Or it was Easter. I think that too has now passed. South Africa has this ridiculous number of holidays around this time of the year: 21^st March (Human Rights Day, the anniversary of the Sharpeville massacre in 1960), 22^nd April (Good Friday), 25^th April (Easter Monday or whatever it is called now – Family Day, I think), 27^th April (Freedom Day, the anniversary of our first democratic elections in 1994), 1^st May (Workers’ Day, except this year we get the 2^nd because the 1^st is a Sunday and the government doesn't want to pee the workers off), 18^th May (voting day for local government elections) and 16^th June (Youth Day, the anniversary of the Soweto uprising in 1976). That makes, by my reckoning, 7 holidays in just under 3 months – not bad work if you can get it. Add two weeks of school and university holidays and you have an entire quarter during which it is very difficult to get anything done. But maybe I shouldn’t complain. After all, I take them too, and my salary doesn’t depend on how many days I work in the month. But I do feel for those in business, particularly owners of small businesses, for whom every day the doors are shut means another plunge in their bottom line.

This time of year is also marathon season, for me anyway. First up is the 2 Oceans, followed by the Safari. Normally they are quite far apart – 4 weeks or so, giving one time to recover from the first before diving into the second - this year they are a mere 9 days apart. 2 Oceans is always run on Easter Saturday; the Safari on the first weekend in May. Of course Easter is a festival which moves with the moon.

The beauty about half marathons is that with a modicum of baseline fitness, one can run them without too much training and still finish in a reasonably respectable time. My friend and colleague, the Handsome Masha, and I have had a busy year – who hasn’t? We tried our best to get on the road every Wednesday evening from 5 to 6 and we probably succeeded about 50% of the time. Then we’d take a gentle 1 hour jog through the leafy green suburbs of Constantia or Newlands, discussing which party not to vote for in the upcoming local elections and why not, whether religion needs philosophy or vice versa, the trials and tribulations of parenting teenagers in 2011, institutional politics and a few other odds and ends – very pleasant, but it doesn’t exactly make one into a running machine. Added to that I had my two games of squash a week against the redoubtable Shag Singe, which are more like episodes in World Wars than sports matches, and my long runs on Saturday mornings – long usually meaning about 11km. Add all that up and it is not a lot. But it is enough to run a half.

Then I discovered something called Endomondo. Well, I didn’t discover it exactly – I read about it in Runners’ World, and went and downloaded it onto my computer and Blackberry. I’ve had it for about a month now and it still blows my mind that all this can fit in a cell phone, and that it is all free. Incredible. Here’s how it works – when you are setting off you activate the program on your Blackberry or other smart phone. It uses the GPS on the phone to locate and track you. You put in the distance you are running, put your earphones in, start your playlist and start running. At the end of every km it cuts the music, and a sweet sounding female voice says something like, “Your time for the last km was 6.30. Your average time so far is 6.12. Your estimated total time is now 2 hours and 10 minutes.” Or whatever. Then the music comes back on. When you finish, you click finish and it immediately uploads all the info to the website. You can view the map and your stats, including splits, on the phone or on the website, and also your elevation and pace on the latter. Quite incredible.

We (Shinguard's Wake and I) picked up the Handsome Masha from his house in Plumstead at 4.45 a.m. Naturally, it was still dark. We drove through the unnaturally quiet streets of Wynberg, up to the M3 and then through to UCT where we found a parking space high up above Ring Road. We then walked down to the start which is in Main Road, Newlands, perhaps appropriately just in front of the brewery. I believe the field for the half this year was 14,500 or thereabouts. It certainly looked that way – runners everywhere. We dumped our sweaters with Shinguard's, who had kindly agreed to come along, and made our way to the back of the crowd. We were both in Group E – I don’t know how many groups there were. It was still a good 20 minutes until the start so we chatted and enjoyed watching the others. The man at the PA welcomed Dan Plato, the Mayor of Cape Town, who told us what fine people we all are and what a wonderful city we live in (remember there is a local election in under a month and even though he is not standing for re-election, his party is). He was asked whether he would be running next year and his reply was lost in a noise which could equally have been a guffaw or a man choking, I couldn’t tell which. But I guess we should say well done to his worship for making the start. Then they asked for silence and played the National Anthem, which I found strangely moving. This is something new – I don’t recall them doing it in the past (and this is my fourth 2 Oceans, Masha’s fifth). Then we had the countdown and then the gun. That was the start of a rather lengthy anticlimax. After 3 minutes we still hadn’t moved. Then very slowly we began to inch forward, passing over the starting mat at about 4 minutes after the gun. That is a little discouraging. Gradually we managed to speed up to a slow jog, but the truth of it is that the first km took me 10 minutes and 41 seconds, which is a hell of a long time. The second, third and fourth were likewise rather slow, considering they were flat, and it was only on the fifth that I managed anything like a decent time. This is an issue for which the 2 Oceans is apparently quite well known. I have friends and colleagues who refuse to take part in it for this reason – too big, too crowded. I guess one just grins and bears it. Added to that one has the usual problem of slow runners/walkers who have started near the front and are blocking the way. But enough grumbling – it wasn’t that bad.

Soon we were past the 5km mark on Constantia Main Road, and not long thereafter the 10km, on Parish Road Constantia. This was the easy half. Now for Southern Cross – the dreaded Southern Cross. 3-4km of steady uphill. I have done the race enough times now to know that it is doable, albeit not very comfortable. You just have to keep your head down, keep going and ignore the super-fit speed-walkers who overtake you. I was watching my heart rate – it had been in the mid 150’s for most of the race and broke 160 on Southern Cross. I discovered that if I ran the way the speed-walkers walked, I could actually go faster than if I tried running normally. That is not very well explained, but I am not sure how else to explain it – less knee action, keeping one’s feet close to the ground and using one’s quads more. This pushed my pulse to the mid 160’s and I got the odd palpitation so I desisted and throttled back a little, not wanting to become one of the race’s negative statistics or give the paramedics on the ambulances any extra work.

A highlight of the race for me is always the music groups along the way – brass bands, drum troops, dancers – as well as the crowds of ordinary people standing along the edge and cheering us on. One’s name and age category are writ fairly large on one’s label, so they can read something about you and I got quite a few shouts of encouragement. At the top of the uphill, one hears the novices tell each other “At last – thank God it is all downhill from here”, which of course it isn’t – it undulates for a few kms, then goes down and then kicks you in the teeth in the last 3km up the M3. But anything is better than sweating up Southern Cross and so the mood is justifiably ebullient once one has turned that corner. The other thing about that particular piece of road is that it has been built with quite a vicious camber which makes running difficult and sometimes treacherous.

Soon we were at the top gate of the Kirstenbosch Gardens. Here they have a shower tent – one can choose to run through and get sprayed, which is a nice thought. Then down past the main gate, and along Rhodes Drive to the M3. I could see that I was going to get to the intersection at almost exactly 2 hours, and was hoping this would be good enough to get me home in less than 2:15. As usual I underestimated the last 3km – it is a stretch I have run many times on Wednesday afternoons and I always enjoy it. Somehow at the end of 18km of tough running, it doesn’t hold quite the same attraction – it is like purgatory, step by painful step. But one keeps going because, well one just does. Finally the UCT rugby fields come into view and it is just a case of pulling it all together for the last 500m. Again these are deceptive – the grass seems to slow one down. Maybe it is just the imagination. On the other hand, one has the crowds and the cheering and the man on the PA shouting all sorts of crazy things and it feels great. The digital clock read 2:17 as I crossed the line – not my best but not too bad for a relatively old fart like me.

And then it is over – medal, phone herself to let her know that one is not in ICU (yet), coke, sausage roll, tea and rusk, apple, the (really) painful climb over the bridge and up the stairs to Rugby Road, collapse on the grass verge and wait for the others. Shinguard's Wake materialised out of the ether, and about 10 minutes later the Handsome Masha did likewise. He had done a 2.53. We exchanged congratulations and then headed for the car. As we left the campus and headed south on the M3 the first runners in the ultra 56km race were just arriving – they had managed 56km in just a little more than we had taken for 21km. Incredible. Great race. There’s a reason it attracts 25 000 runners between the races – it really is a great race. Roll on 2 Oceans 2012.

Race stats courtesy of endomondo - what a great program.

Title	Two Oceans Half Marathon
Sport	Running
Start Time	Apr 23, 2011 6:00 AM
Distance	21.28 km
Duration	2h:17m:32s
Avg Speed	6:28 min/km
Max Speed	4:07 min/km
Calories	1801 kcal
Altitude	51 m / 225 m
Elevation	227 m ↑ / 165 m ↓

Stockholm

2011-03-21T00:23:00.002+02:00

The old story - spend 3 days in a country and write a book about it, 3 weeks and write an article, 3 months and write a page, 3 years and you have nothing to say. No I am not going to try and write about Stockholm, but I will try and write about what I did in Stockholm.

Another of these meetings. I actually tried to get out of this one - said I could suggest more appropriate people. It seemed like such a long way to travel in order to speak for 20 minutes when a quarter of the audience would be out jolling, a quarter would be reading their emails, a quarter would be distracted or asleep, leaving only a quarter to actually hear what you would be saying - seemed like madness. The people I suggested turned out to be unavailable, so the organisers came back to me and asked again, said they'd pay, etc. Okay, I didn't need that much persuading, I confess.

Tuesday
I flew SAA again - it is the only airline left whose lounges I can still use, and even theirs only in SA.The flight left on a Tuesday evening, so I went from work - herself kindly agreed to pick me up and drop me off - long term parking has become exorbitant, and anyway, the first princess now requires the car, so leaving it idle at the airport for a week wasn't an option. I was impossibly early, but managed to check in and found my way to the business lounge where I made some good progress with a Heineken and then a glass of some or other Merlot I had never heard of while I waded through emails and sundry admin junk on the laptop.

Eventually we boarded and I found my seat which was well back, and next to a right hand window. It was a perfect late summer evening and I was looking forward to seeing the Atlantic Coast as we overflew it, something I had missed on the Berlin trip being on the wrong side of the plane. Sod's law - tonight the pilot decided to do a tight turn and head north over Constantia, Newlands etc, east of Devil's Peak, so all I saw was a lot of Cape Flats and a fair amount of dark sky. And then we had climbed into the high cloud and Cape Town was behind us. I settled down to my book ("The Promise" by Keith Ward - a retelling of the stories contined in the Pentateuch, up to Moses' death - I was eager to see whether he could make any more sense of it than I had managed) and wondered what they would conjure up to torture us with at dinner time. The plane was an Airbus A340, which only has TV's in the centre aisle, and even then not very often - pity because the film was The King's Speech, which I haven't seen, and I would have enjoyed watching it, but it was too much effort.

Dinner arrived - for once it was not "chicken or beef", but "lamb or fish" - someone must have said something to them! It was edible - what more can I say. I had another Heineken and dreamed of Old Blighty. I was really tired, so as soon as they had collected the dishes, I kicked back and fell asleep, to wake around 3 or something ghastly with a throat that felt and tasted like a camel's backside, and a headache. I needed water, but had neither the energy to get past the rather large lady hemming me in, nor to summon the hostess. Like a fool I suffered in silence and eventually drifted off again. The person controlling the cabin temperature seemed to have a strange sense of humour - to start with it was low, and both I and the lady next to me opened our blanket packs and disappeared under a spread of red. Sometime during the night I woke up sweating and had to throw everything off - well not everything you understand - just the blanket and my sweater. I guess someone had complained they were freezing so they decided to cook us instead. I know from running courses that the one things you can never get consensus on is optimum temperature.

Wednesday
We were early landing at Heathrow, so they put us into a holding pattern briefly. These can be quite fun if the weather is good - they sometimes do flips over Westminster - but that day all was cloud and it was barely light, so we saw nothing. Eventually we got our wheels down and the big bird safely parked at the Terminal. The captain announced proudly that, oweing to the mist, we had landed on autopilot - look ma, no hands. I wasn't sure whether we were supposed to cheer, or find that comforting. I guess they do this sort of thing all the time - it still seems a little odd to me though. At security I whipped out the trusty UK passport, my late father's greatest gift to his offspring, and was virtually waved through. Various buses and elevators later, I arrived at Terminal 3, where I had to do the X-ray thing, putting the toothpaste in the plastic bag and so on - you would think I'd remember by now, but I never do, probably because I don't understand why it is necessary (like why you have to take your laptop out of the bag).

My connecting flight (SAS) was delayed an hour, so I had the immense pleasure of spending about 3 hours milling around Terminal 3 before they put up the information regarding which gate to proceed to. I can tell you with a certain amount of authority that London Heathrow Terminal 3 has very little to recommend it. The most exciting thing I found was the Starbucks. Thank God for Starbucks! I had two Latte Vente's (that's the biggest dude). Had to change 20 US dollars for pounds, which cost me GBP1.50 in commission, the sods.

The SAS plane was a Douglas, I think. I had seat 33A, which sounded good, but turned out to be the very last seat on the left, and the "view" was non existent, oweing to the large engine which was right outside (the twin jet are either side of the tail section, rather than on the wings). See pic.

Fortunately, the air-steward took pity on me and said I could move to another seat - the plane wasn't full. I just wondered why they bother having a seat there - it is hell-on noisy as well. So it turned out I didn't see much, but as it was cloudy just about all the way to Stockholm, I don't think I missed much. Just like to see where I am going. Our pilot was a chatty fellow, but as most of what he said was in Swedish (presumably), his banter didn't make much impression on me. It was one of those monologues which goes on for about 5 minutes in the other language, and then breaks into a broken English translation which lasts all of 20 seconds - you always wonder exactly what got lost and left behind in translation.

We were informed that due to the wind we would have to go over Stockholm, turn around and then land from the other side, which is precisely what happened. Looking out of the window all I could see was snow, ice, water and pine trees. There didn't appear to be many buildings. I must have missed them, because I can now confirm that Stockholm does have buildings - quite a number of them, actually.

My bag had made it unviolated, which was a relief - I wouldn't have to present my slides in jeans and teeshirt. Immigration formalities seemed fairly perfunctory and superficial. I bought a return bus ticket which turned out to be my first shock - 219 kronen, which is about R242. The bus in Cape Town costs R50. Granted it doesn't run as far - maybe half the distance, but Stockholm certainly is pricey. The bus trundled down the highway and I snapped pictures as we went - the fields seemed still to have a good amount of snow and the trees were still waiting for the spring foliage.It looked (and felt) like winter still. The temperature at the airport was 3 degrees C and it dropped to 2 en route.

I arrived at the central terminus (Cityterminalen), and it was a short walk to my hotel, the Radisson Blu Royal Viking, although I did get the wrong Radisson at first - it seems there are a few. I had a room on the 7th floor, which pleased me - for some reason I usually get rooms on low floors with no views and I like to see the city from my window. It looked out across Vasagatan towards a lovely looking building with an impressive clocktower, which Google Maps informed me was the Arbetsmarknadsdepartementet - the Ministry of Labour.

Looking the other way up and across the Vasagatan I could see a tall church spire which I learned was that of the Klara kyrka, and I determined to visit it when I got a chance. There was an interesting contrast of old and new - modern office blocks and shops and the old church and that was to be a theme for my few days in the city.

There was free high speed (and it really is high speed) wireless internet in my room, so I got to work on the backlog of emails and work. Sometime in the evening I felt hungry so went across the road to the MacDonalds and got something called a Big Tasty, which seemed to be a Big Mac plus bacon, plus French Fires. That set me back 68 Swedish Krone, or about 75 South African rands, from which I deduced that our currency is either 3 times undervalued or theirs 3 times overvalued, since a Big Mac and fries in SA costs about R25, as far as I remember. I should say that MacDonalds gets a lot of bad press for the nutritional quality of their food etc. but I am a big fan of Mac's - when I travel it is the one place I know I can go to (1) which is close by - there is always a MacDonalds around the corner (2) where I know what I am getting - the menu is pretty standard (3) where I won't have to mortgage my house to pay the bill and (4) where I won't have to pay a hefty gratuity to an incompetent waitron for service I don't need. They may not have the classiest product in the world, but at least they have a consistent product. And actually, the food doesn't taste bad, particularly the fries. Add to that the company, which is usually a mix of students, blue collar workers and families, and you've got a reasonably pleasant place to visit. Which is what I did. My short sojourn across the road sharply reminded me that I was near the arctic circle. I don't know what the temperature was but in the space of about 2 minutes, my fingers just about froze and I felt like my nose had solidified and was going to fall off in one chunk.

I got back to my room, went through my presentation once (had to make sure it didn't take more than 20 minutes) and turned in for the night. Before switching off the light I flicked through the channels on the TV to see if there was anything worth depriving myself of sleep for - there wasn't, but I am always fascinated by the porn channels. Maybe I should rephrase that. Hotels usually have 2 or more pay channels, some with movies, some with what is variously called "adult" or "erotica". To watch them one has to agree to additional money being billed to your room account. If you happen to flick onto the channel, as I did, a big black box appears in the middle of the screen telling you you have to pay to watch. So all visuals are blocked - what is not blocked is the audio, and that is what fascinates me. I simply do not believe that anyone - anyone - makes those sorts of noises, at that volume, when having sex, even if they are having the most unusual, bizarre, otherworldly, cataclysmic, earthmoving encounters. Maybe I am naive. It doesn't seem physiologically possible. After a few minutes of fascination I decided sleep was more exciting and switched off both the TV and the light.

Thursday

I was up early - got the time zones confused and woke in a panic thinking that I was late for the meeting. I showered and shaved, went through the presentation one last time, skipped breakfast and left for the venue. With 2 hours in hand, I thought I would easily make it. I followed the directions on the email we had been sent which detailed "How to get from the hotel to the eCDC". First I had to buy a strip of bus tickets. That would be 180kr (R199) and I could get it at the 7-11. Cool. Got that. Then I had to find the 69 bus stop. Well that took me about half an hour - I got confused between the Vasagatan and the Klarabergsviadukten and wandered round for a long time looking like a bewildered foreginer, which of course I was. A king lady tried to help me, but actually sent me even further off course. Eventually I went back to the hotel and was told "Oh yes, it is just across the road". Then I got the 69 bus going the wrong way, but the driver was very nice and set me right. The trip took about 20 minutes. I got out at the Tomtebodevagen stop / Karolinska Institutet and walked the 5 minutes up to the very impressive and beautiful eCDC offices. There was some snow on the ground and it really was very pretty.

I approached the young man at the reception who was very pleasant and helpful, but somewhat concerned. No, he said, no meeting like that here today. There had been one yesterday. My heart sank. I got out all my papers. There, I said, look, it says Thursday, March 17th. Yes, he said, but it also says Venue: Piperska Muren and that was back in the city centre, actually quite near my hotel, within walking distance in fact! Was it far? Well yes, it was quite far - too far to walk. Maybe 4 km. Reluctantly I called a cab, forked out another 140Kr and sat back as the driver took me to Piperska Muren. Next time I shall read the instructions more carefully.

The correct venue turned out to be no less impressive or charming than the first. It is a banquet and conference venue set in a little square just across from the Stockholms rådhus on the Scheelegatan. I found some friends, found a seat, found a power point for the laptop, couldn't find some coffee, and settled down for the day's proceedings.

At the end of day one, they fed us at the conference venue. The food throughout was great. Wonderful heavy dark bread. Lots of salmon. Delightful little chocolate creations. Great coffee.All decidedly wicked. I had some beer with my dinner, which came in a wine glass for some reason and was described as "light." So I had another. We then made our way home - a roughly ten minute walk (!) across a frozen river or inlet. There was a keen wind, but it wasn't too unpleasant. At least it wasn't raining or snowing. It was fairly early when I arrived back so I had a couple of beers in the SkyBar with an Australian (who also likes beer) and a Canadian colleague (who drinks vodka). A round of drinks cost about 400 rands! It was all very nice. We said good night and I then spent the next 3 hours catching up my work in the room - trips are all very well but the work doesn't go away.

Friday

I was better prepared, and less pressured, since my talk was over. I went to breakfast but didn't feel like eating much so made do with fruit and joghurt and of course coffee. I spotted the Australian paediatrician in the breakfast room, who looked about as ropey as I was feeling, and we dined together, to be joined later by a journalist and a researcher from India. It made for good conversation. The Australian was full of really good stories, some of which I remember. He told us how his great grandfather had been a cattle thief – professional, unabashed – and had ended his days getting shot dead by the police in front of his wife and child, because he kept running away. But the story I liked best was from his days as a doctor in Malawi. He had gone to buy supplies for the hospital malnutrition ward, in bulk. The owner of the local store evidently looked at him and asked him what he needed and why. He explained that he had everything he needed except for 25 litres of cooking oil. The Malawian looked troubled, in the way that only Malawians can. “Bwana,” he said, “I am thinking that you you will only be needing 20 litres, not 25.” Now my friend actually needed 25 but to be polite he said, “Oh, OK!” at which point the Malawian, still looking troubled, came back with “And Bwana, I only have 15 litres to sell you!” To me it epitomises everything that I love about Africa and Africans – practicality, gentleness, just their methodical, matter of fact approach to life’s little challenges. I loved it.

I walked to the conference venue, uncertainly at first but I soon recognised a few landmarks from the night before and in no time I was there. The forecast was for snow, but it hadn’t started yet, although it was very cold. I stopped once or twice en route to take photo’s – Stockholm is one of those cities where you seem to be able to point your camera in just about any direction and get a good shot.

The second day of the conference went off without major hitches. I made use of the excellent broadband connection to catch up of admin, while keeping one ear on the conference proceedings in case called upon to offer a comment or answer a question – which didn’t happen, I am thankful to say. Lunch was some sort of meat loaf or fritter – it tasted a little like pork pie, but softer. Not sure what it was and thought better not to ask in case they told me! One thing I found odd was that each long table had a bottle of sparkling water for each person but just one bottle of beer – one for the entire table. Of course, noone drank it. If there had been beer for everyone, the afternoon’s proceedings might have been very different…

The meeting ended around 4, with a consensus agreement being agreed on, strange as that sounds. I walked back to the hotel and by this stage there was a steady fall of light snowflakes – very pretty. Back at the Radisson I relievedly got rid of my jacket and work clothes, and donned my jeans and hoody. I wanted to go and have a look at the Clara Church, and possibly hear some music there. Getting across Vasagatan was a mission but I managed without falling on my face. A short walk up the hill and I stood before the very impressive church and was glad to see that the door was open. I went inside. Old churches have a particular sound, smell and atmosphere and this one was no different. I rather like it. There were perhaps 5 people sitting in the pews, some at prayer, others just sitting quietly, presumably thinking. I made my way halfway down the first block of pews and sat down. Behind me towered a beautifully ornate pipe organ and high above me an elaborately decorated ceiling with images of I wouldn’t know who – presumably Biblical characters. In front of me and to the left loomed an elevated, gilded pulpit. I couldn’t see exactly where the door was, but it was plain that the preacher would have to do some climbing to get to it.

I’m not normally a man of many prayers, but something prompted me to pray and so I offered some simple prayers, for my late father and father-in-law, for my family, for myself … and having prayed I felt strangely at peace.

I had intended to do some more exploring but the weather was getting worse so I went back to the hotel, spent an hour or so in the gym, Jacuzzi and pool, and then did some more work. Around 8 I was hungry again, so made a second visit to the MacDonalds across the road – I wasn’t prepared to walk any further and neither was I prepared to pay the prices at the hotel restaurant. So Big Tasty it was, I survived and so did my wallet, although it creaked a little.

Back in my room I watched a little TV – the BBC don’t seem to know whether to concentrate on Libya/Gaddaffi or Japan/earthquake-tsunami/nuclear meltdown. Can’t be that often that they have two stories of such magnitude running simultaneously. And then I drifted off to sleep…

Saturday

Saturday was always going to be good. Nothing to do and all day to do it in. Well, almost. My flight was only at 3.10 pm. I had a leisurely breakfast with some colleagues, checked out (I like it when I have enough time to check every corner, cupboard, nook and cranny about three times), put my two bags in the baggage room and made for the Vasagatan. The snow had stopped and it was a glorious day outside – cold, but blue skies everywhere, still lots of snow around, maybe a half an inch or so, a sparkle everywhere. I walked down the Vasagatan and then crossed a bridge to the island which is Old Stockholm. Again, I make no pretence of knowing anything about the city except what I read, but I gather that this part of the city is by far the oldest, and that some of the buildings date back to the 1200’s. By white South African standards that is ancient.

I walked around for an hour or so, taking pictures, just drinking it in. As I said, everywhere I pointed the camera there seemed to be a shot waiting to be taken. I don’t know what all the buildings were but I know I saw the Riddarholmen Church – the oldest preserved building in the city and its only surviving medieval monastery church, built by the Franciscans around the time of King Magnus Ladulas in 1290. Unfortunately it was locked, and I couldn’t go in. I gather it is more of a museum and burial place now than a church.

I saw the Noble Museum, though I didn’t go in – there were a lot of tourists there and I wasn’t really that interested.

I wandered around the old city for a while longer. One rather narrow, cobbled street was being dug up - at the bottom of a humongous ditch law exposed sewerage pipes and there seemed to be a bit of an iffy smell in the air. I side stepped it and managed to avoid falling in.I then looked up and caught site of the name of the road on a signboard on the wall of the nearest building and was delighted to learn that I was standing in Kakbrinken. OK, well the humour of that might be lost on those who don't speak Afrikaans, but I thought it was funny.

On the way back to my hotel I passed the Houses of Parliament, the Rikstag I think they are called, and the Town Hall, both beautiful and impressive buildings.

It was getting late and I had to go, though I could happily have spent a week there. I walked back to the hotel, picked up my luggage, found the airport bus (they come every 15 minutes and I already had a return ticket), and bade goodbye to Stockholm as we drove through the streets and out onto the highway. I noted a sign which said Arlanda 29km - I hadn't realised it was that far. We made it in good time, check in was seemless, and I had about an hour to kill at the gate. I ordered a Swedish beer, brie panini and a pastry from the deli. The guy behind the counter, who was not Swedish, looked a little quizzical and then confided that he thought the Danish beer was better, so I took his advice and had an Eriksberg.

Three hours later I was in London, and 18 hours later I was back in Cape Town after two uneventful flights. On the second leg - London to Cape Town on SAA overnight - I decided to have a few drinks and listen to the classical channel on the headphones provided, seeing as I wasn't in front of the only TV in site. Not sure what I expected - maybe some light classics, or chamber music. I was surprised to be served up a loop of English Choral Music, including some of my favourites - Gustav Holst, William Walton, Frederick Delius, Hubert Parry - a genuine and very welcome surprise.

General impression of Stockholm - lovely city, nice people, frigging cold, very expensive. Would love to go back.

Berlin

2011-01-30T15:40:00.001+02:00

Berlin

Germany is one of the biggest countries and economies in Europe and has a history which, whether we admit it or not, has affected all of us on multiple levels, including, for some, deep and personal ones. Even those of us born many years after the end of the World Wars and the cessation of hostilities have lived under the shadow of those wars and their aftermath and consequences. Catastrophes of that magnitude throw very long shadows, darkening the lives of generations of children and grandchildren, weighing on their lives and spirits, whether they are aware of it or not. Such is my experience, anyway.

So it was with a mixture of feelings that I learned that the venue of a course on which I teach had been moved from Belgium, which I have visited several times, to Berlin, which I had never visited – in fact I had never visited Germany. I was happy at the prospect of visiting one of the great capital cities of the world. Particularly appetising was the possibility that I would be able to at least figure out half of the street and shop names, notices, and the like – not that I can claim to speak German, but I have found that a good knowledge of Afrikaans, and a passing acquaintance with Yiddish through herself’s family, has helped a lot in the past. Coming from a country which is widely regarded itself to have undergone a miraculous unification and aversion of civil war in the 1990’s, I was keenly anticipating seeing the evidence of the “Berlin miracle” of 1989, when the Wall came down and nearly half a century of enforced artificial segregation came to an end. I was excited to visit the city where so many of the leading lights in my field of interest, particularly Robert Koch, had lived their lives, conducted their experiments, delivered their lectures and published their papers. Yet I could not escape the uneasy feeling that I would be visiting the city where Adolf Hitler, arguably the most evil person ever to have darkened our planetary doorstep, and his murderous band of henchmen, developed their pernicious theories and philosophies and then orchestrated and conducted their social engineering and reign of terror during the terrible decade of 1933-45. I would travel past places from which many thousands of Jewish men, women and children, not to mention other “undesirables”, were ripped from their families and communities and sent to lonely and terrible deaths in concentration camps. I had a feeling that I would find that 65 years had not been long enough to lay such ghosts to rest. I wondered what remnants I would find of a once thriving German Christian culture – many of the great Berlin churches were flattened in the Second World War and whilst some were rebuilt at great expense, I wondered whether I would find that Berliners had moved on and dispensed with God and the religion which informed every aspect of the lives of their forebears for so many centuries.

Saturday

I flew on the Lufthansa overnight direct flight from Cape Town to Frankfurt. It was a standard and uneventful flight and the only mildly irritating aspect was that for some reason I could check in online ahead of the flight but could not select my seat – I was told it would be assigned at the departure gate. The same applied when I dropped off my bag – the clerk told me she couldn’t assign my seat “because the plane is very full” – this despite the fact that I got to the airport 3 hours before my flight was due to leave. I threw a mildly hissy fit and was assured that I had a seat – they simply couldn’t say which one, so I retired to sulk on one of the seats next to A3 and read my book (Orsen Scott Gard – “The Worthing Chronicles” – sci-fi). In the end I had a nice seat – left side window, well back. But I could have done without the extra angst that comes with the creeping suspicion that you have been “bumped” but nobody is prepared to tell you so. We took off from Cape Town in a southerly direction around sunset and the captain took us on what I imagine was a courtesy flip over the peninsula – south to Cape Point and then north up the chain. I had a pretty good view of Simonstown, Fish Hoek and then Hout Bay, later Robben Island and then we left Cape Town behind and the view became either monotonous blue or monotonous white until the light faded and after that it was black with a small crescent moon hanging in the western sky.

Sunday

We landed very early at Frankfurt. To my surprise, the captain told us ground temperature was 12degrees Celsius – I had expected less. I had been following temperatures in Germany the previous week on Google and Berlin had been down at minus 7. Two weeks before that it was in negative double figures. Also, my colleague from Cape Town had arrived in Berlin the previous day and had emailed to tell me that it was extremely cold. In fact his words were, “Make sure you bring something to keep your balls warm, if you don’t want to have an ice-block hanging between your legs!” So this was a pleasant surprise. I made my way to my connecting flight, with a brief pause at passport control and security. I had plenty of time, my luggage had been booked through and I was travelling on a European passport so I didn’t have any problems, despite the fact that Frankfurt is a huge (I find) and confusing airport.

I had a window seat in a rather empty plane to Berlin. Most of the view was cloud but as we neared Berlin we dipped below it and I saw a number of frozen lakes and a lot of snow – not a huge amount else, to be honest. I worried briefly about landing on ice, but no one else seemed concerned so I buried my head in my book and waited for the inevitable bump. It was quite a jolt when it came, and we seemed to slew back and forth a bit across the runway, but I expect the pilot and others knew what they were doing and soon enough we had slowed down and were turning off towards the apron.

Tegel Airport in Berlin is quite a small facility, compared to Frankfurt, for instance. What I particularly liked was that the relevant carousel is right next to each gate so that we literally stepped off our plane, walked along the airbridge and into a warmed room, where we waited a short while for our cases before proceeding to what seemed to be a fairly tame customs and security check – maybe because we had come from Frankfurt, not elsewhere. The fellow in uniform wanted to see my passport and know where I was from and, when he heard South Africa, he enquired whether I was bringing in cigarettes. I assured him I wasn’t and he let me in. I found the exit, stepped out into the freezing cold and wet, and found Bus 109 to the Zooligisches Garten. It was surprisingly cheap – €2 or thereabouts if I recall. I had to get off at the Bleibtreustrasse stop on Kurfurstendamm. All sounds like quite a mouthful, but by the time we left these were familiar names, rolling off our tongues like any others. Kurfurstendamm, I later learned, is like the Oxford Street of Berlin – the premier shopping district - which is odd, because it didn’t really look that posh, or not our section of it, anyway. Further down it got a bit posher.

Our hotel, the “Hotel Kurfurst Pension”, as it said above the door, was easy to miss – the front door was wedged between “City Jeans” and an estate agency, and was rather blandly signposted. I had to press the buzzer, at which a loud buzzing noise emitted from the doorpost and the door miraculously sprang open. I then had a choice of going up the three stories to the reception, in a lift the size of a wardrobe which travelled at about one floor per minute, or taking the stairs. Since I had luggage I took the lift – thereafter I always took the stairs. I was early for check-in, but they kindly changed my room to one of the front rooms with a bay window. I had a very agreeable continental breakfast with my colleague who had already been there a day and we agreed to meet later to do some exploring. I then retired to bed for a few hours to catch up on the sleep I hadn’t been able to get on the plane.

Around 4 pm we took a walk down Kurfurstendamm in the direction of the Zoologisches Garten. We stopped at Starbucks for a cafe latte – I am fond of Starbucks latte’s, for a number of reasons, not least the fact that they don’t cost the earth and you pretty much know what you are getting. I suppose the same goes for MacDonald’s, but not everyone is a fan of theirs. Entrance to the zoo was €12, so we gave that a miss, thinking we could probably see more wild animals in the streets of Cape Town for free. Instead we explored a few shopping complexes and then came across the “Erotic Museum”. Well, what can I say? – curiosity got the better of me! I imagined that they would have on display Hitler’s fishnet stockings or at the very least some examples of what Berliners through the ages had used on those long cold nights for their mutual amusement and titillation. So I was disappointed to find that it was nothing more than a sex shop selling a large number, but very little variety, of Scandinavian porn, and little else.

From the boringly mundane to the sublime – on the way back to our hotel we stopped into the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtnis Kirche – or Memorial Church. It was built in 1895 in honour of Kaiser Wilhelm 1, but was severely damaged in the bombing raids of 1943. After the war it was slated for demolition, largely for safety reasons, but in a referendum Berliners voted not to demolish it. The steeple tower, only half its original height, was preserved, along with the vestibule, and a new church built alongside. The edges of the steeple are jagged and I read that as a result the ruin is known to the locals as “The Hollow Tooth”. It did remind me of one of a cavity-ridden molars I had extracted from mouths of patients in my days as a bush-doctor. I found it all at once beautiful, haunting and very sad. The intended aim is, I guess, to remind the visitor of the horrors of war – in that it certainly succeeds. But I also sensed hope here - hope and light, enduring and resilient strength …

Dinner was at Ali Baba’s. Not very German sounding, but the small restaurant not far from our hotel had a wonderful atmosphere, great beer, really good pizzas and it didn’t cost an arm and a leg – about €20 for us both, I think. The beer was called Berliner Weise, which I learned is sour beer with a shot of raspberry or woodruff syrup. It is served in what looks like a large wineglass and looks like green (woodruff) or red (raspberry) cold drink. I had the green and my friend the red and we both enjoyed it. We then had a short, wet and cold walk back to the hotel and so to bed. Thus ended my first day in Berlin. Thus began my week long struggle with the central heating system of the hotel, of which more anon.

Monday

I was worried about getting to the Institute on Monday morning – the instructions sounded daunting. My colleague, on the other hand was unperturbed. I needn’t have worried - it turned out he was right – I should have had more faith in the German public transport system. I remember in Washington DC that the metro (underground) had electronic signboards which let you know exactly how many minutes it would be until the next train, but I have never encountered this system for buses. In Berlin they have one at each stop on the major routes and they tell you not only your own bus’s expected movements but a few others besides. Amazing! Couldn’t help thinking that in Cape Town they would be nicked and used as televisions or something…

We caught the 109 back towards Tegel Airport, but got out at the Schloss Charlottenburg – a mansion on the banks of the Spree, and then caught the M45 west down Spandaustrasse for about 10 blocks, over a major highway, to the DR Klinik stop, where we alighted. Simple. The DR Klinik is a satellite of Charite University Medical School, I suppose, and it houses their Institute of Tropical Medicine, which is where I would be teaching / lecturing / facilitating for the next five days. I won’t bore you with the details of the course except to say that it was run with Germanic efficiency and was very successful. Each morning started with a joke or a story – here are some of those I remember:

“A lecture is a process wherein whatever a professor describes is transferred directly to the notepads of the students without going through the brain of either the professor or the students”.

“A minibus taxi was stopped near the South Africa – Zimbabwe border. The traffic officer told the river that his department was running a campaign and that because the driver was wearing his seat belt, he would receive R1000. The driver was naturally delighted. The traffic officer asked him, “So what are you going to spend the R1000 on?” “Oh, I think I will buy a driver’s licence with it!” said the driver. The main in the passenger seat, sensing that trouble was looming, told the officer, “Don’t worry officer – he only speaks like that when he is drunk!” Another passenger moaned, “I knew we wouldn’t get far in a stolen vehicle!” The officer was starting to get alarmed when there was a knocking noise from the back of the taxi and a disembodied voice shouted, “Hey, are we through the border post yet – I need the toilet!”

“A vaccinologist got married and went on honeymoon. After dinner on the first night he retired to bed with his new wife. As he started undressing and removed his socks, she noticed that he had very odd looking toes and asked him what was wrong with them. “Oh”, he said, “I had toe-lio as a child”. When he removed his trousers, she noticed he had very strange knees and asked about their origin. “Oh”, he said, “I had knee-sles as a child”. When he removed his underwear, she gave a gasp and said “Don’t tell me – you suffered from small-cox as a child!”

Each day started at 9 and ended at 6 or after. This sounded fine, since where I had just come from the sun was rising around 5 and setting at 8. The nasty shock waiting for me on Day One was that by four p.m. the streets were dark and the sky black. We caught the bus back to the hotel in the gloom, but we got used to it after a few days.

I was keen to try Ali Baba’s again, but my compatriot wanted a change so we tried the German Deli on the corner. We agreed to meet in the foyer at 8 and walked the 100m or so to the Deli. It was bitterly cold and we were thankful to step off the pavement and into the warm room. It seemed we were the only guests. The barman greeted us in German. We did our best to respond in kind but he could obviously see we weren’t Berliners and switched to English. We surveyed the menu. Every second item seemed to be either pork or potato or both. I ordered the potato soup which turned out to be very rich and filling. Good choice. My friend had a salmon dish and pronounced it satisfactory. I convinced him that we needed to drink some German beer, although he is not a beer drinker. The barman obliged with two tall glasses (500ml) of a dark coloured draft. Superb. My friend didn’t agree, so I finished his as well!

I had been told that the speciality of Berlin is curry-wurst and that I must be sure to try some. Sure enough, there was a fast food on the corner advertising all types of wurst but emphasizing their curry wurst. I ordered one to take away. It turned out to be quite a messy affair. They sliced the sausage transversely and then slopped a fair amount of curry sauce over it. The bread was tasty, but very crumbly. Eating all of this in the hotel sitting room with a diminutive plastic fork and no napkins was a challenge and resulted in an appreciable amount of the meal ending up on the floor. As for the taste, it was interesting, pleasant, but I wouldn’t travel all the way to Berlin for it. Maybe we picked the wrong shop. Also, it didn’t seem very “German”.

Tuesday

We had another long day of lectures, discussion groups and the like. The weather was still wet and icy. Instead of taking lunch in the clinic’s staff cafeteria which is a 5 euro, sit-down affair, I walked up the road to a small convenience store and bought a large tin of peanuts which filled me up and gave me some exercise at the same time. I found those peanuts immensely satisfying – maybe they made me feel vaguely African again amidst the miserable Berlin weather.

My friend and I had been invited out for dinner with a colleague who originally comes from India, but has lived in Europe for many years and in Berlin for eight. He took us on a drive through the city centre, pointing out some famous structures and landmarks. We stopped alongside an old looking building which he indicated was the site of Robert Koch’s famous public lecture where he announced his discovery of Mycobacterium Tuberculosis, well over a century ago. There is a plaque on the wall commemorating the occasion. He also took us to Checkpoint Charlie and the section of the wall which remains next to Hitler’s bunker, which they are making into some sort of museum. All very interesting, but the biting cold prevented us from spending too much time sight seeing. We had dinner at a Thai restaurant. I ordered a tofu vegetarian dish, which was a mistake. It wasn’t unpleasant, just nondescript. The others had some spicy seafood which they said was excellent. We washed it down with a nice bottle of South African Chardonnay and topped it off with banana (mine) and deep fried ice cream (my friend’s) deserts. All in all a very pleasant evening, and we were back at our hotel and in bed by 11 p.m.

Wednesday

Much the same sort of day, except that this time we had a Faculty Dinner at a German restaurant across Kaiser Friedrich Strasse from the Schloss Charlottenburg. It was a wonderful evening – great conversation, good food (I had the Bavarian wurst) and wonderful “seasonal” German beer, brewed on site in one of those huge copper contraptions, and again served in those long glasses by the half litre – it slipped down like honey. I liked it so much I had another glass, and then had to join two of my older colleagues, who are intrepid walkers, in electing to avoid the 109 bus back to the hotel and instead cover the 2 or 3km on foot. It was a cold but dry evening when we started and it only began to drizzle when we were a few blocks away from the hotel. I thoroughly enjoyed it. On the way, my Belgian colleague, who is a retired professor, educated us both on the tortuous convolutions of 20^th century European history – normally one would have to pay a fortune for such an erudite tour guide!

Thursday

Our one free evening! Also the last evening before most of the European faculty would be going home to the UK, Belgium and elsewhere. It was rainy and miserable when we finished the sessions for the day, but we decided none the less to try and do some site seeing. We dropped our bags at the hotel and took a bus down Kurfurstendamm towards the Zoo, then transferred to another which would take us to the Fernsehturm tower in what was East Berlin. We found the tower and it was even open for visitors, but the person in the ticket office told us that there would be virtually no view from the top on account of the mist and cloud. At 12 euro that would be a bit steep so we decided against it and instead walked around the area to see what we could see. There was an impressive church nearby – the St. Marienkirche, which looked well preserved but was closed. Unfortunately the rain got worse so we eventually admitted defeat and took the bus home. It took us down Unter den Linden – originally a bridal path linking the royal residence with the Tiergarten, later the city’s most fashionable street, and then past the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag, and through the Tiergarten to the zoo. We had all the upstairs front seats in the bus to ourselves, but unfortunately it was raining heavily by now and the windows were all misted up so we didn’t see much. For dinner we headed back to Ali Baba’s where we had another delightful meal of pizza and beer. Ironic that in a week in Berlin I should eat more Italian food than German, but there you are.

Friday

The course finished in the early afternoon. We had lunch in the DR Klinik cafeteria with our colleagues and bade some fond farewells, headed back to the hotel to drop our bags and then walked down Kurfurstendamm to the bus station at the Zoo. There is an area of central Berlin up near the Tiergarten called the Kulturforum – it houses a few churches, museums (and some “church-museums”) and the Philharmonie and Kammermusiksaal concert halls when the Berlin Philharmonic is based. I had a vague notion that I might be able to get into a concert although, my friends had warned me that concerts are sold out well ahead of time. They were correct – I could have heard Yo Yo Ma playing Shostakovich for €70 a seat (all the cheaper seats were sold out), but thought better of it - a decision I may live to regret. Instead, we walked through the Sony building, with its remarkable modern architecture, down to the Brandenburg Gate, with all that it means, and past the Reichstag. The weather held and we had a very interesting time, albeit most everything was closed. From the station under the Bundestag, we got on the U train which took us back to the Zoo, and then walked along under and next to the S line until we found a likely looking restaurant (which also turned out to be Italian!). After another pizza and another beer, we returned to the hotel.

Saturday

Blue sky! We had agreed that if the weather was good we would try and go for a run on Saturday morning, so at 7 a.m. I phoned my colleague and confirmed that he was still game – he was. At 7.30 we met, in tracksuits, if not quite in gloves and beanies, and began our run – down Kurfurstendamm to Breitscheidplatz (don’t you love these names), down Tauentzienstrasse, past the Europa Centre, past Wittenberg Platz and into Kleiststrasse, then left up An der Urania, Schill Strasse, and Klingelhoferstrasse (in Central Berlin the same strasse is wont to change its name every block or two, it seems, which gets confusing) to the Tiergarten. We ran up Hofjägerallee to the Grosser Stern and then along Strasse des 17 Juni (evidently named after a workers uprising in 1953 in former East Germany), back to the Zoo and the hotel. Nice light run – maybe 4km all told.

After breakfast and checking out we met a South African colleague who is working at Charite University and together we made the trip to the town/suburb of Potsdam. It takes half an hour or so by train and is well worth it. The train was clean, punctual and quiet, but it seems even in Berlin the graffiti artists had been busy on the windows with some sharp objects. Nothing that a horse whipping wouldn’t cure, say I. The track winds through suburbia and then snowy woodland and over one or two rivers and canals, I recall – very pretty. We arrived at a fairly large station and were almost immediately accosted by a short man with a large handlebar moustache, who was intent on being our tour guide. We listened politely (he spoke English), accepted the free map he offered us, and then told him we didn’t have time as we needed to return to Berlin in a few hours. We walked around the town, admiring some fine churches, including the very impressive 1830 Nikolaikirche, with its huge dome, the rows of beautiful red brick tenant houses in the 1733-42 Hollandisches Viertel, the “New Gate”, which looked fairly old to me, and finally the Neuer Garten, a lovely bit of parkland next to the Heiliger See, with its Marmor Palais (Marble Palace) and the manor house style Schloss Cecilienhof where Churchill, Stalin and Truman met to decide Germany’s fate and carve her up in 1945. It is now a hotel with a small museum.

I was a little concerned about making my flight, so probably didn’t stay in Potsdam as long as I should have – certainly worth another visit. We bought some food and drink (cheese roll and baked cheesecake for me) and took the train back to the Zoo, where we parted with a “give my love to Cape Town” from our colleague. A quick visit to a curio shop (I didn’t buy anything) and then back to the hotel.

The rest was pretty uneventful – Bus 109 to Tegel, check-in, long wait, short flight to Frankfurt, another long wait, and then the long flight home to Cape Town where I arrived a little after 10. The trip had been too short, but I know that I need to go back sometime, preferably with herself, to whom these sights, smells, sounds and names will mean a lot more. I cannot say “Ich bin ein Berliner” with JFK, but I can say that I loved Berlin, in a strange way that is difficult to articulate.

The amazing architecture of the Sony Building

St Marienkirche and the Fernsehturm tower

The Brandenburg Gate

St Nikolaikirche, Potsdam

A really impressive building just next to it.

The Heiliger See

Some interesting contrasts at the DR Klinik, Charite University.

The Old School Tie

2011-01-17T22:30:00.002+02:00

I left The Old School 30 years ago. Since leaving I have only lived in Johannesburg for about a year when I was in the army, and even then I was mostly out of town in Heidelberg, some 50km away, so I’ve never really been in any danger of becoming one of those Old Boys who find it difficult to divorce themselves from the institution and sever the umbilical cord. Having said that, the institution has always held a very special place in my heart – more special than that held by my university, for which I now work, I must confess. I think it has something to do with my having been happy, popular and successful there, whereas at University I was never particularly happy, not remarkably popular nor unpopular and not particularly successful either.

Five years ago we had the Great 25Year Reunion. Old Boys from the Class of 1980 came from far and wide – Australia, Europe, North America – it was quite remarkable. I was asked to make a speech at the dinner. I made the mistake of trying to be too philosophical, speaking about the war we had fought in, the lack of recognition we had received, the passage of time, our own vulnerability – 10 of our class of 150 were already dead by then. My mistake was failing to realise that half the guys would already be half pissed by the time I spoke. Some listened, others drank more, most just waited politely for me to finish banging on and for the party to resume.

Friday

This time there were far fewer of the class present – maybe 30 out of the remaining 140. One from Europe, a few from Cape Town, mostly just the local lads. At the previous reunion I had been shocked at how jaded, overweight, and seriously unattractive we all looked. This time I guess I was more prepared and actually thought we didn’t look too shabby for a bunch of nearly 50 year olds. We started off by attending an assembly in the school hall with the boys. They respectfully let us sit whilst they stood at the back and in the gallery. The head boys of the classes of 1960 and 1985 spoke briefly about what the school meant to them. I was off the hook and was able to just sit and take it in. The huge arch, the immensely high ceilings, the long gilded lists of names on the dark wood panelling – head boys and captains of sports teams stretching back 108 years. Nothing had changed much in 30 years.

Well, not quite true. The kids are now well mixed – black, white, coloured, Asian – while in our day they were all white. Great! As one of us remarked, that was simply normalising a deeply abnormal situation. The school choir in our day was an embarrassment, mainly because any boy with the slightest musical talent, apart from being a Rock Musician, was immediately considered suspect in terms of his sexual orientation, and consequently went to great lengths to pretend that he was tone deaf, was now a thing to behold and to hear. Mainly black kids, with one or two token whities, but what a sound!

The boys treated us to the War Cry in the quadrangle after assembly. They have changed the rhythm and cadences a little in 30 years but the words are the same – “Itchy Balla Goota, Skeeta Ramma Doota, Suss Kanada, Sunna Kanassky, Boom …” Total gibberish, which is why it works. None of your “Ra, Ra Hockeysticks, we shall overcome, we will be true” crap. “… Bodias, Bodias, Bodias, as, as. Jimela! Jee! Jimela! Jee! Teddy Bears! Wah! Who are we? Teddy Bears!!” The last and only intelligible lines in deference to King Edward VII – “Teddy”. The roar of the boys reverberating off the walls of the quad made our hairs stand on end.

We checked out the new Pavilion, donated by a wealthy old boy who is younger than me, to the tune of R7m, we were told.

Next it was the Golf Day. Dread! I hadn’t played since the last reunion, 5 years previously. On that occasion, I decided that I would play better if I had a few beers before starting, which I did. Only problem was that there was a beer wagon following us around and by the time I got to the eighteenth, I could scarcely focus on the ball and was managing some shots which would not be found in any golfing book. I didn’t get the prize for the worst golfer but I must have been close. So this time, I started sober and tried to remain that way. I was playing in a four ball with an old mate, who is a reasonable golfer. Now the nice thing about this four ball idea was that you could pick your ball up if you hadn’t sunk it by Par plus 2, which meant that most holes I picked up and left my mate to do the honours. Only the better score of the two counts. I find drivers and woods very difficult and a source of much embarrassment, so this time I stuck to irons until near the green. In fact I stuck to a 5 iron almost exclusively. To cut a long (very long) story short, I hacked my way around 18 holes, back and forth from stage left to stage right, in and out of trees and bunkers and lakes, until we finally and thankfully got back to the clubhouse. My borrowed golf shoes were killing me on account of being a size or two too small.

Then it was a quick shower, a drink (Rock Shandy for me), the inhalation of a lot of second hand cigarette smoke, a raffle (yawn!) and a reasonably nice barbequed dinner. We again missed the “hosepipe” – the prize for the worst foursome – they give it to you with the words, “Stick to gardening!” I drove home.

Saturday

I spent the first part of the day playing cricket with my seven year old godson. Of course he won. When you’re seven you can change the rules, the umpires decision – in fact you can change reality. Good kid. Was too stiff after the golf to manage rugby.

In the afternoon we went through to a sports pub in FourWays somewhere and met the crowd again to watch the Springbok / Wales rugby match. Got off to a shaky start, but they rallied and eventually won. I am not a huge rugby fan, but I enjoyed the atmosphere and seeing the guys again. Then we headed home and had a quiet evening with a braai.

Sunday

Sunday was the day of the Memorial Parade. My old school has the distinction, so I have been told, of having the longest roll of honour in the World Wars of any school in the Commonwealth. Not sure if it is true, but I do know that the roll is very long and takes the headmaster a good 5-10 minutes to read.

The parade starts with the guard of honour (Grade 11 boys) falling in on the fields with their heavy old rifles (Boer War?) and then marching up to the school’s main entrance. They then slow-march into the quadrangle, while the pipe band flanks the entrance and plays “The Skye Boat Song”. When the pipes cut, a lone snare drum continues until all the troops are in place in the quadrangle. It is very impressive. Then there are sundry hymns, the laying of wreaths, readings and so on. The climax is the reading of the Roll of Honour and the one minute’s silence, which is timed to happen at 11:11. Of course for some of us it means more than for others – I think of my late uncles who both fought in the SA forces, and of my father whose family faced the bombers in London and Surrey during the dark days of 1940 and 1941. But I also think of some of my own friends and acquaintances who were killed in the South Africa Border War in the eighties and whose names are now of the Role – Daniel de Klerk, Steve Watts, Howard Remmington, Mark Mason … there but for the grace of God went I. After the silence, the words on the cenotaph are repeated: “Sons of this place, let this of you be said, that you who live are worthy of your dead. At the rising of the sun and the going down of the same, we will remember them. We will remember.” And we do remember.

As if that wasn’t enough, we then have the lament. A lone piper plays “Flowers of the Forest”. He starts in the quadrangle, but then moves to the stairwell and playing, down the stairs and out to the fields. The effect is that the notes fade away gradually and then disappear. Powerful stuff, and then it is over. Tea and cakes, a display by the band, chat with a few old connections and home for lunch.

A braai, a beer, a trip to the airport and a flight back to Cape Town and another anniversary is over. I guess we’ll continue to do this every five years until there is no-one left standing, or at least no-one capable of making it to Johannesburg. As the years slip by the numbers will diminish, the representatives of the class of 1980 grow more stooped, less active, more confused perhaps (is that possible?). No doubt the school will change, so that the institution which we come to visit will look less and less like the one we remember. But my guess is that there will always remain behind enough of the old friendship, camaraderie and, dare I say it, love, to make it worthwhile and meaningful. If you don’t agree, or simply don’t understand where I am coming from, go and see the movie “Spud”. Extremely strong bonds are forged in the “coming of age” years.

Quad and cenotaph

Clocktower and main hall

New pavilion

Honours Board in the main hall

Matric exams and the choir warming up

Egypt

2011-01-17T22:26:00.002+02:00

Egypt

Sunday

No blog for some months. Partly because nothing terribly exciting has happened. OK, there was a trip to the US and UK which was possibly worth a blog, but I just didn’t get to it. But mostly because things have just been too hectic and I have been, frankly, too buggered.

I was up in Johannesburg two weekends ago attending a school reunion – okay maybe that is worth a blog as well, I’ll get to it – when my boss phoned me with bad news about a project we have been working on. A technical hitch had put the whole thing in jeopardy. Probably about 2 months’ hard work. Having ruined my day with that pearl, he went on to say, in parting, “And there’s a meeting in Cairo I’d like you to attend – I can’t go. 29^th November to 1^st December. Can you go?” Well, what was I supposed to say? So here I am.

I have now visited quite a number of countries in Africa outside of SA: Mozambique, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia (somewhat extended stay courtesy of the SA defense force), Zambia, Malawi, Swaziland and Lesotho (both of those by mistake, the first driving and the second hiking), Burundi (in transit), Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania/Zanzibar, Ethiopia, Mali and Senegal. I make that 17, including SA. I think there are 50, so I am one third of the way there. But Egypt wasn’t on my list. My boss said “Take a few extra days, see the pyramids …” But that wasn’t possible either. Contract workers don’t get much leave and I had already put in for 2 weeks in December.

So here is what I discovered. Egyptian visa’s are free for South Africans. Of course you still need to pay the travel agent and the courier, because your passport needs to go to Pretoria. But the visa itself is free. It took about a week. Probably would have been quicker were it not for the fact that I happened to send it on the same day as Eid (little Eid, not Big Eid, but still Eid). Anyway, it was duly returned complete with one less blank page and an elaborate purple ink stamp in arabic which told me and anyone else that I had a single entry visa valid for 3 months. Nice.

There is a direct Johannesburg Cairo flight, operated by Egyptair, code share SA/Star Alliance. Great. Now the sponsors of the meeting were prepared to pay business class for anyone travelling over 6 hours. My flight was 8h + 2h. Greater. The snag was there were no business class seats available. The alternative was flying via Dubai on Emirates and that was going to cost nearly double. I did the decent thing and agreed to fly economy. Bad move.

I have flown SAA many times now and have to say I have seldom had problems with them. They once lost my luggage in Dar es Salaam, but I did get almost all of it back (minus a cheap camera and cell phone charger), 12 weeks later. Apart from that we have had a good relationship. Until yesterday. My flight leaving Cape Town was delayed about 30 minutes – the incoming flight was late, reason not specified. So instead of getting to Johannesburg at 19h50 I got there at 20h20. They couldn’t book my luggage through to Cairo – security issue. So I had to wait for it at domestic arrivals and then re-check it in, after a compulsory plastic wrap (free) [This is now standard on KQ Johannesburg-Nairobi flights as well]. Well that took until 20h40, mainly because I got the wrong terminal – A not B. Finally checked in, got my boarding pass, looked at it and saw boarding time 20h45, Gate A18. For those who don’t know Oliver Tambo International Airport, that it the very very last gate in the new international terminal. I was a bit puzzled because the flight was only supposed to leave at 21h45. To cut a long (very long) story short, I made it at 21h50 and there was no problem. Thank goodness the queues at passport control were short. I asked the guy at the gate why we were checking in so early and he gave me one of those “you moron” looks and said, “because the captain wants to leave early”. Which of course was total BS. We left at 21h45. Still mystified.

I thought I had scored a coup by securing a window seat in a full plane. 48A, which is near the arse-end. Maybe my body is changing shape. I have never had such an uncomfortable chair! It was just awful. No matter how I contorted, realigned, or adjusted myself, I just couldn’t find a position to sleep in. This was going to be a long 8 hours. I decided to skip dinner, had a glass of water, pulled on the visor and turned onto my left side, ramming my head up against the window and the excuse for a pillow they provided. Somehow I made it through. At about 4.30 the lights came on and the cabin controller announced, first in lengthy Arabic and then in rather abbreviated English, that we would be landing in Cairo in 90 minutes and that they would be serving breakfast directly. No fine. The breakfast wasn’t bad. Orange juice, fresh fruit and bread rolls / croissants. I skipped the tea/coffee – it always seems to taste really bad at 30 000 feet and above. No sooner had we finished breakfast than the pilot came on the blower – “Ladies and Gentlemen, we are going to land at Luxor because of bad weather at Cairo”. Wonderful. I had visions of having to take a bus the last few hundred kms. We went into a steep descent, which felt precipitous to me, but what do I know, and then leveled off and had a fairly smooth landing at Luxor. We stopped in what looked like the middle of the apron. Passengers started getting up and getting their luggage down, only to be told to “sit down, we will be waiting here until the weather in Cairo is good”. I think we waited about an hour. Again I tried unsuccessfully to sleep. They played some really nice classical music over the PA – I recognized some Bach, Mozart … for which I was very grateful. It could have been Lionel Ritchie (it was later). Finally the crew got the command – “Close all doors and cross check”, or whatever it is they say, and we were told that the weather in Cairo was now better and we would be leaving shortly, expected flying time 50 minutes.

By this time the sun had risen and I could make out the Nile and the Sahara. The lasting impression was, apart from the flood plain, of unbelievable barrenness. I was taught in school about the fertile crescent, which included the Nile. I don’t realize how narrow the prongs of the crescent were. I marveled at cultivated fields which seemed to have been created out of nothing more than desert sand, judging by what lay alongside them. But mostly it was just sand, and a huge amount of it, as far as I could see to the West. There were some fairly sizeable hills, but they too seemed to be made of sand, or at least sandstone. Everything was the same colour – “sand”.

Cairo appeared. From above it looked very densely populated, but not squalid. The houses and apartment blocks seemed pretty ordered and neat, just packed together rather tightly. And everything seemed to be one colour – sand! Not unattractive, as the morning sun caught it and threw long shadows. I didn’t spot much in the way of trees. The airport is a bit back from the river and city centre, east I think. There was some fairly thick low lying mist, which was presumably the reason we had had to wait at Luxor. Our pilot navigated his way through it – or maybe his instruments did – and the runway appeared as if by magic. We hit it fairly hard and swerved a little left and right but not uncontrollably. We were offloaded and bussed to the terminal. I grabbed an arrivals form and joined a queue. Inevitably, the slowest one in the room. I was a bit worried as I had forgotten to print out all the supporting documentation I had submitted with my visa application – invitations and the like – but the immigration officer hardly looked at my visa and passport and waved me through.

My shuttle guy was waiting and after a short wait for a fellow passenger who never materialized, I was ushered to a waiting Volvo Estate, and driven about 5km (I think) to the JW Marriott Hotel in Heliopolis, at a cost of 134 Egyptian Pounds, which is about R150. Thankfully someone else is paying. The hotel is set in a golf estate. The rest of the estate appears to be under construction – many unfinished mansions, lots of workmen around. I say mansions because these are multi-million dollar constructions – 3 or 4 storeys, multiple verandahs and balconies, huge entrances and colonnades which make them look more like DC museums than houses … goodness knows who owns them and lives here. I didn’t think Egypt had oil sheikhs but maybe I am wrong. The hotel itself is luxurious but not totally over the top. Every hotel has its plusses and minuses. This one has probably the best fitness centre and sports facilities I have seen – all complimentary with the $135/night room rate.

My room is next to the hotel’s main swimming pool. There are about 20 rooms, I guess, in an oval around and facing the pool. It is quite nicely done, with walkway on the top and overhanging gardens. I walk out of my double doors straight into the pool area, straight into the pool if I am not careful. I am also very close to the tennis courts and the Mirage Beach – an artificial beach with a wave machine.

I slept for an hour or two. When I awoke I was quite hungry but didn’t feel like a full sit down affair so went in search of something light, which I found at the Mirage café in the form of a Swiss Chocolate ice cream, bolstered by a Danish, a ring donut and a jam donut. Why all three? Just felt like it. And then immediately felt pangs of guilt and had to go for a run.

I ran around the golf estate this afternoon – one can pretty much run around the perimeter road, and it takes about an hour, so maybe 8km – I wasn’t going very fast. You are not on the fairways and greens themselves – the route follows the roads which service the houses on the estate. Someone has gone to a lot of effort to create the garden of Eden. Where all the water comes from I don’t know – maybe, being close to the Nile, ground water is not difficult to access and pump. There are lots of palms, and other trees and these huge mansions, as I have mentioned, which tempts me to go on a bit of a rant about golf courses and golf estates, but I won’t.

The fitness centre pool in shaped like an eight, with half of it inside and half out, joined by a narrow channel which underpasses the running track (75m circuit, all indoor) and the glass façade of the spa – cool! Found a new piece of LifeFitness equipment I haven’t seen before – like a mix between a cross trainer and a stepper. Managed to burn 130 Cal in 10 minutes without too much effort, which is more than I manage on a stepper and burning at that rate on a cross trainer takes more effort, I think. Have taken a picture and will be suggesting it to Virgin Active when I get home.

I enquired about a Thai massage, having had a great one in Bangkok a few years ago. That one cost $40 and a friend who is married to a Thai said I had been ripped off. In Cape Town they are, I am told, about the same. These guys wanted 600 Egyptian pounds plus taxes, so about 800 EP total, for 90 minutes. That is around $120. I took the pamphlet, but not the massage.

Dinner was in the Mirage Café. I expected a lot of delegates there but it turned out to be just me and one paediatrician from Zimbabwe. Clearly the others had either not arrived, weren’t hungry or were just too tired to attend. We chatted about some matters of mutual interest – researchers we both know, projects we are both involved in, travel options (she had also come via Johannesburg on the flight that got delayed in Luxor). She told me that she is busy with a PhD through a University in Oslo, focusing on MTCT but seldom finds any time to do the research or write the papers, because of such a heavy clinical and administrative workload. She said her department is very short staffed – the posts are there but no one applies for them. Even those who are there are more or less obliged to run private practices in order to provide for their families. Odd, I thought – I would have thought one could raise a family on the salary of a specialist / lecturer. I mentioned the salary ranges for academic doctors in Cape Town, starting at around $40k and going up to over $150k per annum. Her eyes widened. At her establishment senior lecturers might earn $15k. I thought she had said $50k, which would still be very low by SA standards. No, $15k, she said. And the professors don’t earn much more. Well, that explains it – I couldn’t raise kids on that either.

The menu was somewhat over the top. I hate having too much choice. I had some vegetable soup with bread, and then settled for the seafood option, along with some interesting looking flatbreads and hummus (there was an eggplant variety and a chickpea variety, both made with sesame seed oil – delicious). I couldn’t resist the pudding, so piled up my plate with fruit salad which made me feel more virtuous about the 2 scoops of Hagen Daas ice cream (one vanilla, one mango) and the chocolate crème brulee which accompanied it. All washed down with a bottle of the local beer which is called Sakari and is not half bad. I hadn’t expected to find local beer here, it being a Muslim country, but there you are. There is little hope for any country which does not brew its own beer. And there is even less hope for a country which does, but makes bad beer. I am happy tosay that Egypt falls into neither category.

We decided to head for bed, it being late and both of us very tired. I popped into a stationery / curiosity shop on the way out and made the mistake of mentioning to the guy there that I was looking forward to the upcoming encounter between Bafana Bafana and the Pharoahs, otherwise known as the SA and Egyptian soccer teams. Well that set him off. He knew a lot more about soccer than I do. He even knew more about my own team than I do – which UK clubs Steven Pienaar and Benny McCarthy play for, for instance. He explained the history of Egypt in about 5 minutes, including the recent unrest between the government, the Muslim community and the Coptic Christians over church building. I promised to come back and buy some of his teeshirts and he promised to give me a 15% discount. That would make them about the same price as everywhere else.

I finally managed to extricate myself from the shop and back to my room. It was very quiet – I suspect I am one f the few tenants in the block. I thought about a quick pre retirement dip ion the pool but decided against it. I flipped on the huge-screen TV and watched about 3 and a half minutes of some movie about a long haired wrestling champ who was working in a Deli telling little old ladies which ham to buy. It looked like fun but my eyes got the better of me and I drifted off. Slept like a baby.

Monday

I was up with the sun but not in the mood for a run. Showered and dressed and headed for breakfast. Tried to be healthy – lots of fruit, low fat yoghurt, salmon and hummus on whole wheat bread and only one cup of coffee. Avoided the mixed grill options, which I have found to be fatal in the past.

The meeting was being held in the golf club ballroom. Go figure – why would a golf club have a ballroom? The club is – what is the word? Handsome? Well appointed? Elegant? Yes, elegant – an elegant building just next to the hotel, wedged between the driving range and one of the fairways, flanked by manicured lawns and ponds with fountains.

The morning consisted of lectures by various experts from around the world, q and a sessions and the like. Quite interesting. No wireless so couldn’t do my emails, but the Blackberry worked. I skipped lunch – fatal. A colleague recently explained to me the clinical science behind post prandial somnolence, commonly known as why audiences fall asleep after lunch. His theory is that one should avoid the carbs and just have fat and protein. I have a better solution – avoid the lunch, have some water and save your appetite for dinner. Which is what I did. The afternoon was more interactive, which is shorthand for “they made us work”. And now we are being taken out to dinner at Le Tarbouche restaurant at le Pacha, which I gather is in Cairo somewhere. Bon apetit!

We met in the lobby of the hotel. For some reason I drifted across to a group which was largely from England, and started discussing the snow, the cricket, the rugby and English things in general. Our departure was delayed because we had to wait for the tourism police to give us an official escort! Well, I guess they have had some nasty incidents in the past and are just being careful. Finally we left. The bus driver nosed the huge beast out into the traffic on the 3 lane highway, amidst much abuse from those he cut off. We trundled along happily, down other highways, then narrower streets, across bridges over the Nile, through downtown Cairo. All looked very busy and a bit chaotic. After about half an hour we stopped and were told this was it – we could get off.

La Pacha turned out to be a large floating restaurant, moored to the bank of the Nile in downtown Cairo. Or rather a group of restaurants. I think there are 12 in all. We were at Le Tarbouche, which sounds French but I think was Egyptian, or at least middle Eastern. We had a table at the window and I sat with colleagues from Belgium, Sri Lanka, India, and Bangladesh. The meal was superb. We started with something like naan bread, but in small rolls, on which we spread a selection of hummus type preparations available in bowls in the middle of the long table. Or one could dip pieces of pickled carrot, cucumber or turnip in the bowls. A lot of eggplant. Then there was grilled chicken breast with rice. And finally a desert which included caramel sauce and ice vanilla cream and I don’t know what else, but was delicious. All washed down with some very respectable Egyptian red wine, one bottle of which was labeled “Omar Khayyam”, and had some of his poetry on the back, even though he was Persian, and the other of which was called “Cape Bay” and had a blurb about Cape Town, but said “product of Egypt” on the back. All very odd, but not at all unpleasant.

Dinner finished around 10 and we made our way back to the waiting bus. Soon we were back at the hotel. I was too tired to do any preparation for the next day, so after scanning the TV channels and coming up empty handed, I killed the light and slept.

Tuesday

I was awakened by loud voices. English. Turned out to be in the room next door – there is an interleading door (locked). It was enough to get me up. I thought about a run, the gym, a shower, and finally decided on a swim, which I took in my sleep shorts, having forgotten to bring a costume with me and not wanting to wet my running shorts and risk chaffing before the race on Saturday.

BBC news seemed to be all about Wikileaks and the embarrassment it is causing all and sundry. Interesting times.

I skipped breakfast – too much food last night – and made my way to the clubhouse where some of the organizing staff were already hard at work preparing for the day.

Full day’s lectures and groupwork on Pneumococcal disease. Spare us! No some of it was interesting and I think I learned something so not all wasted. Managed to miss lunch again as I had some urgent safety work to attend to which required fetching faxes from my room, reviewing them and sending Blackberry emails to various people. Had to get them faxed because I wasn’t prepared to pay the data charges on roaming for 3 3MB files. After 3 attempts they finally came through and I was able to review the hard copies and send an email response via the Blackberry. They want 75 Egyptian Pounds for an hour of internet access, which I find a bit willing. That is over 10 dollars. I have been very careful with emails and sms’s on the Blackberry, given that I have to pay for all this myself – reading them is free – it is when you reply they nail you, and when you download bulky attachments, they really take you to the cleaners. I have steadfastly refused to answer calls on my cell phone which come up as “Unknown number”. All that came crashing down when I was forced to take a crisis call from a colleague who then spoke for 6 minutes+. Damn!

The sessions finished a little early today and I thankfully came back to my room, changed into shorts and a T shirt, and my running shoes and headed for the gym. Did 10 minutes on that funny new machine (120 Cal) and then 20 minutes on the treadmill at a relaxing 9 kph while watching Tom and Jerry. No Cal count for some reason but I would estimate about 220. The cartoons finished and I switched to sport. They were screening the Wales – New Zealand game at the Millenium Stadium in Cardiff. Those Welsh can sing! Unfortunately, their singing was better than their rugby. When I left it looked as though the AB’s would make a sweep of it.

I went and sat in the hot Jacuzzi for a while, and read my book – “More than matter”, by Keith Ward, in which he does his best to explain some basic philosophical thought around the question of what is real, to mere mortals like me. Must have looked a site. Followed that with a swim and then headed back to the room. Dinner was in the Italian restaurant at the hotel, but wasn’t particularly Italian if you know what I mean. I think there was one pasta and olive salad which said something about “Italian”, but otherwise it looked remarkably similar to what I ate in the “Mirage Café” 2 nights ago. All the same, pretty good.

And so, to bed. Having sorted out some more paperwork, emails and the like, the land of nod beckons. Tomorrow is the last day and we fly out tomorrow close to midnight. Groan. Shall make the most of the afternoon in the gym. Have a half marathon booked for Saturday and at this rate someone will have to wheel me around the course in the barrow…

Wednesday

Fariyl uneventful morning, with some talks about pertussis. Didn’t realize it was still such a problem. This guy has documented incidence rates of nearly 10% per annum in The Netherlands. Problem is the vaccine only gives 10 years’ protection, or less, so the pool of susceptible is being constantly replenished.

Nice lunch and some fond farewells. It has been a good meeting, although I am not sure it was altogether cost effective, but then it wasn’t my money that was being spent.

I checked out around 3 and left my suitcase with the concierge. Then I went down to the gym for a last workout, Jacuzzi and swim. I fell asleep next to the pool reading my philosophy book. Must try harder. Then another Jacuzzi, a shower and I finally had to say goodbye. It has been a happy association – for me anyway. Now I am sitting in the lobby waiting for the rest of my party and for the transfer to the airport which should be here in about half an hour. In front of me about five people are busy putting up a huge Christmas tree. I couldn’t swear to the religion of the 2 men and one of the women, although I would guess Muslem. But certainly two of the women are wearing headgear. How funny! Well, I have heard that Moslems revere both Jesus and Mary, so why shouldn’t they have a Christmas tree? And maybe I am wrong – the shopkeeper told me that the Egyptian Orthodox church is quite big here, as well as Coptic and Catholic. He himself was an Orthodox Christian. He said they have a Pope-equivalent here in Cairo.

On the BBC today they featured “The Battle of the Billboards” – evidently the Atheist Society of America has erected a sign, at a cost of $20 000, next to one of the main tunnels (New York?) which reads something like “You know it’s a myth – this season rather celebrate reason!”, to which the Catholic church has predictably responded with a separate billboard reading “This season celebrate Jesus”. Personally I’ll settle for celebrating love, a la Christina Rosetti – “Love came down at Christmas, love all lovely, love divine…”Celebrating reason doesn’t do much for me. Who would bother, apart from some crusty old scientists and maybe the odd philosopher? Have we really become that boring?

It is going to be a long night, with the plane only due to leave around 11.30. They will probably try to feed us dinner after midnight. I shall try to be polite. I have found Egyptians to be quite touchy. I expect that as long as we get around to taking off, we shouldn’t have any interruptions, but you never know.

My colleague duly appeared and we found our taxi. I asked the concierge whether 10 Egyptian pounds was a reasonable tip for a taxi driver – he said it was more than reasonable. The taxi turned out to be a 7 series BMW, but a rather old one. When we got there I took my case, produced the ten-ner and the driver looked dyspeptic, then started laughing. “That is little money” he said. “Oh,” I said, “I’m sorry – it is all I have in your currency.” I should have known – he was more than happy to accept euro’s, pounds or dollars. Was I conned? Yes, probably. Do I care? No not really. He got us there comfortably and safely and that is probably worth more than 10 Egyptian pounds.

Airport security was officious and somewhat unpleasant, but I guess they are worried and a little jumpy. The prices at the “duty free” shops were unbelievable, even by airport standards. So no tee-shirts, girls.

Thursday

We eventually left late, after midnight, the reason being that the inbound planes from Heathrow and elsewhere had been delayed by the foul weather. This greatly irritated some 20-something year old South Africans who were returning home and had had the same thing happen to them the previous night – except that the Johannesburg flight had not waited for them, and they had spent a very uncomfortable night in the airport.

The plane was quite empty so ample space to stretch out, but nothing really to stretch onto. Something about the design of that plane, but even with the arm rests up, impossible to lie down. The airline meal was inedible. They said it was fish but it could just as easily have been chicken or rubber or cardboard. I don’t often leave food on my plate but I sent the whole lot back to the galley, put on my mask and tried to sleep.

We were late landing in Johannesburg. The breakfast was slightly better than the dinner, which is not saying much. I missed my connection to Cape Town but was able in consequence to have a shower in the business lounge whilst waiting for my plane. Life saver.

So … 5 days later. Been there, done Egypt, none the wiser, need to go back.

One of the hotel pools

Go figure

I thought this hippo was quite cute - with the frog sitting on his nose

The Nile by night

The golf club where we had our meetings

The view from my front door - my room was like those in the pic

The Knysna Forest Half Marathon OR A Day of Low Rats

2010-07-11T18:17:00.000+02:00

Wilderness National Park, looking West

Our cottage.

The maintenance staff religiously flattened the molehills

every morning and a few hours later they were back.

The serene and beautiful Touw River

Yellow-wood tree on the banks of the Touw

Flowering aloes in abundance everywhere

Fork tailed drongo in tree

The Knysna Forest Half Marathon OR A Day of Low Rats

I’ll explain the Low Rats later. This race has a reputation – quite a few friends have told me “You’ve gotta run the Knysna Forest – what a beautiful race.” So last year I entered and paid, but never got here – it is 5 hours drive from Cape Town and I was travelling right up until the day before. I swore at the time I’d get it right this year and I did.

The race forms part of the Knysna Oyster Festival which is a week long (? 2 weeks) string of sales, promotions, competitions, family activities, sports – what do I know? – the focus seems to be on these mucoid masses that come in rather ugly shells, cost R10 a pop, taste like nothing (except lemon juice and Tabasco sauce), have to be drunk with a glass of Graca and for some unfathomable reason are very popular. Not with us, in case you couldn’t tell.

Wednesday

The rest of the family was on vacation or leave so we decided to make it a family thing. I booked a family cottage at the Ebb and Flow Camp of the Wilderness National Park. We left Cape Town at 10 a.m. and took a fairly leisurely drive along the N2, stopping at Riviersonderend for a coffee and Steer Burger – Wacky Wednesday, 2-for-the-price-of-1. We picked up a Kia Picanto at the George Airport for the business part of the trip and I was pleasantly surprised by the little car – OK, no power steering and no AC but everything else was fine.

I picked up a guy at the airport who needed a lift to Thembalethu – he was wearing a reflective jacket which I assumed meant he worked on the runway. It also reassured me that he was probably well intentioned. Of course the conversation fell to football. He didn’t have much good to say about our national team – said they had lost because they were more concerned about money than about representing their country. He may be right – I wouldn't know. Point is they have been kicked out. The French, Danish and Japanese teams had been staying in Knysna until their respective exits from the Tournament and he had seen something of all of them. He spoke about the unifying effect that the World Cup had had on South Africans – “gees”, “Ayoba”, “Se Nako” – we have all learnt some new words, most of them not English. I told him I had heard the national rugby coach sulking, “I am sick of soccer. I don’t even know who is in the semi-finals!” and I predicted the demise of rugby as the national sport of white South Africans. Sorry, mnr. de Villiers, but football has done something that rugby never did – we have been bitten by the bug, and we’re not going back to braaivleis, rugby, sunny skies and Chevrolet – well, not the rugby anyway. Take your place in the queue, and it isn’t at the front.

The Ebb and Flow cottages are in the flood plain of the Touw River. Actually I’m not sure whether it is a lagoon or a river since it doesn’t seem to flow. Maybe it flows in the wet season and Wilderness is in the middle of a really bad drought. The cottage had everything we wanted except that 3 nights in a row we couldn’t get a fire going in the fireplace, despite buying firewood and firelighters from Pick ‘n Pay and spending what seemed like hours coaxing and blowing and cajoling. I think it was the wood. The last time this happened was a Christmas braai at my in-laws, to which they had invited about 20 people – I simply couldn’t get it going and in the end we had to cook it in the oven under the grill. Most embarrassing.

Our first night there was also the occasion of the second World Cup semi-final – Germany versus Spain. This was a huge game in anyone’s book, but especially for us since herself has some serious German roots. Also, we both really enjoy the German team, which seems young and enthusiastic and has played some really attractive football during the tournament. Sadly it wasn’t to be – they just didn’t spark on the night and although they didn’t play badly, Spain played better, including a brilliant header which got them their one goal. So Germany were eliminated. We shall be reduced to supporting Holland, with South Africa, Ghana and now Germany gone.

Thursday and Friday

We did a few walks in the Park - up the Touw River. Herself and I stayed in one of the rondawels there when she was pregnant with Princess Firstborn and it brought back some good memories. Of course that was in January, hot and steamy and mosquito infested - very different from frosty July. There were dassies on the cliffs, a few waterbirds on the river, a fork tailed drongo flitting in and out of the trees. The aloes were all in bloom, quite glorious.

Saturday

I was originally going to sleep over in Knysna the night before the race and had booked myself a room at the Montessori hostel for the purpose. When I registered for the race on the Friday afternoon, however, the race inquiries guy told me that it only takes 35 minutes to drive through from Wilderness and that if I left by 5 a.m. I would have ample time to make the 6 a.m. deadline. In fact the real deadline was 7.15 but they were advising people to arrive early. So I cancelled the school hostel – sounded rather Spartan anyway. Somehow, we managed to get the princesses up at 4.30 to leave at 5 a.m. It was still dark when we got to Knysna. We found a parking space right next to the Finishing marquis. I left the family and walked the 2.4km to the start at Loerie Park – normally it would be a scary walk in the dark, but there were lots of runners doing it and I just followed the crowds down the running path along the lagoon shore into George Rex Avenue and along to Loerie Park where we joined a 4-abreast queue which seemed to be about a kilometer long but probably wasn’t. The front part of it was disappearing periodically into buses and minibus taxis. I was hoping to get onto a bus but it wasn’t to be – I found myself on a minibus. Next thing we were off. The first km was fine because it was uphill and the taxi being full, old and underpowered couldn't go very fast. The turn across the traffic onto the N2 was touch and go but we made it. More uphill and then left to Nekkies up the R339. That’s when it got really scary because the road undulated and the driver gunned it on the downhills like his life depended on it. Somehow we got there in one piece.

We disembarked onto a tar road in a pine plantation and walked along a well lit path for some 500m to the gathering point for the half marathon at a place called “Glebe” (really?). The full marathon runners had already left at 7. There was an extremely long queue for the loo’s – made up virtually entirely of women. Enough said. We men had all gone in the forest. We had about 45 minutes to wait while the buses and taxi’s rolled in with the rest of the 6000 athletes. Some young men and youths were congregating just off the road, in the plantation – clearly not runners and I had trouble at first working out who they were. Several had large black plastic bags. The race marshals came and shouted at them once or twice, but did not chase them away – seemed to be OK as long as they kept their distance. So it turns out that there is a tradition attached to this race – given that the start is often in cold and misty conditions, runners come with an extra layer which may be an old sweater or T shirt or blanket and when the race starts they leave it with these “Forest people”. Nice thought. Unfortunately all I had was the Pick ‘n Pay plastic apron so that is what they got. The fellow with the microphone made a lot of light conversation but he did warn us that because of the change of finish venue, they had had to put in a 3km loop in the forest and that “it has a few uphills so don’t use up all your energy at the start!” We should have listened better.

We started running at 8 a.m. sharp. The first 2 km were a steady climb uphill which, though unwelcome, did result in the field spreading out and there was never really a problem with space, the way there is in the 2 Oceans HM. Then we turned right onto a dirt track, a plantation road, and we undulated our way along it for about 5 or 6 km. I found the lack of distance markers a bit frustrating as I was hoping for a good time on this ostensibly downhill and fast run and I couldn’t gauge my pace properly. But apart from that it was a lovely run. There was a fair bit of up and down, especially down, but nothing to stress the muscles too badly. We passed two water points. I had a headache and wondered whether I might be dehydrated so quaffed a few cups of Coke or Pepsi, I forget which it was, and took water sachets whenever I could. Around about the 8km mark, we were directed to the right down a subsidiary road. The downhill led us to an opening – we overlooked a very steep decline, at the bottom of which we could see the line of runners snaking along and, worse, snaking up the other side. An Afrikaans lady next to me voiced some concern to her friend about the coming "oppie". According to the official documents we dropped about 100m in the space of around 3km, and then climbed out again in about 2km, which brought up the 14km or 2/3 marker. In all the half marathons I have run (7 now) I have never walked, but this time I walked. I walked because the steepness of the hill reduced me to a pace where the walkers next to me were keeping up with me, even overtaking me. I walked because my pulse rate was hitting 170. Walked 30 paces, ran 20, until I got to the top. It was sheer purgatory.

The next 3km were mostly downhill. Again, we descended about 100m in 3km. Pleasant running, There were some real characters on the run who kept everyone’s spirits up with their commentary and chit-chat. One fellow from PE said on a particularly nasty uphill “Gee I really miss the X5”. There were four guys in orange shirts and wigs, carrying a Dutch flag, another fellow draped in a Spanish flag and a young lady with pink bunny ears, pick tutu and pink socks. Well, it takes all types. Runners are a fun lot.

Then we got to a very larney, up market golf estate – I forget the name and it isn’t on the route map but suffice to say I couldn’t have afforded one of the garden fences, let alone one of the houses. OK, fine, I am not here to criticize the opulence of super rich South Africans – leave that for another blog. But I will say that the road down the mountain from their airy estate was one of the steepest descents I have ever had to run. We went from just under 200m to sea level in under 2km – by my calculations that is a gradient of 200m/2000m or 1:10, which may not sound bad, but that was the average and there were stretches where it was as much as we could do to stop our feet running away with us. I could feel my toes crunching into the front of my running shoes, could envisage the blood blisters forming, could hear my quads complaining with every step, my knee joint surfaces slamming into each other. I was going to have to pay for this, I knew.

Which is where the “low rats” come in. Running along the forest roads reminded me of a road sign one often sees on mountain passes in South Africa – heavy vehicles engage low gear, which in Afrikaans is a “lae rat”. So here’s the thing: low rats are needed when you go uphill (to give you more torque) and when you go downhill (to stop the vehicle running away). When you have a course which is all up and down, you spend most of the time in low rat. Hence, a predominantly downhill course like this is not necessarily a fast course.

After what seemed like an eternity we got to the bottom of the pass and the N2. They took us under the main road on a boardwalk which appeared to have been built specially for the purpose, and then along the newly bricked sidewalk along the N2. An elderly bystander encouraged us: “Well done, only 2km to go”. My legs felt like lead. Try as I might I just couldn’t find the energy to pick up the pace and get in under 2.15. Runners passed me in droves – where they found their energy I have no idea. I just knew that all I had in me was to keep going at around 9 km/h to the finish line. So in the end it was a 2.20, my worst time this year. Herself and the princesses were near the finish line waiting for me, full of encouragement and congratulations. I picked up my medal and complementary cold-drink and we made our way down to the Knysna waterfront for a bit of R and R – starting with a large latte and followed up some time later by a “monster pizza” from Pannarotti’s, washed down with a glass of some rather sharp but basically OK red house wine. Which also gave me a good excuse not to drive back to Wilderness – actually I wasn’t sure I’d be able to bend my legs, but the wine finalized it.

Back at the cottage I soaked luxuriantly in a hot tub foamed up with the herbal stuff that came in my goody bag. Heavenly, except for the fact that it burnt my chafed nipples like fire, but that is probably too much information entirely. I then lay on the couch and fell asleep while the princesses watched “High School Musical 2” for about the hundredth time. The sky had become overcast and soon the rain was pouring down. The temperature had dropped a good few degrees. Unwilling to try yet another unsuccessful fire, I turned on the electric heather and cranked it up to full, put on a few extra layers of clothes, fetched a blanket and drifted off again. Tonight is the 3^rd-4^th place playoff between Germany and Uruguay which we’ll watch. Tomorrow is the final but we’ll be back in Cape Town.

Sunday

Well, the rain continued through the night, and at times it was really heavy. The playoff game in Port Elizabeth was a cracker, with Germany emerging victorious by 3 goals to 2, but it was played in heavy rain at times which made things interesting, but presumably really difficult for the players. By dawn this morning it was still bucketing down and I began to worry that we wouldn’t make it out before the rivers flooded and the roads closed, but we were OK, trundling up the Kaaiman’s River Pass without too much hassle. As we drove west the cloud lifted and the rain lessened, until by Swellendam the sun was out and we were treated to some stunning views of the snow capped Langeberg to the North.

All in all an interesting race. Will I do it again next year? Not sure my knees will take it, but I’ll think about it. I like Knysna. I like Wilderness and this whole stretch of coastline with its vleis and lagoons and rivers and beaches. Part of me wants to move here, but that isn’t unusual in my travels. It does seem that there is a different rhythm to life here. Something to think about ….

And tomorrow back to the rat race. The low rat race.

Two Old Friends

2010-06-06T14:29:00.003+02:00

I have just returned from a conference. I have never been a big fan of conferences, but I guess they serve a purpose. As far as I can see they are often just an excuse to generate a lot of hot air, spend a lot of money, eat too much and drink too much, and pass a lot of impractical resolutions, after which everyone goes home and resumes living their lives and doing their work as they did before. On the other hand, they can be useful for meeting new people and staying in touch with old contacts, friends and acquaintances. So I was delighted to bump into an old friend who in fact was the first person ever to hire me. He must have been reasonably happy with what he got because he repeated the exercise not once but 3 times, as I came and went to various other jobs and postings.

He crept up behind me when I was standing at our booth and softly said “Hello”. I turned around and was confronted by a middle aged man, slightly shorter than me (and I am not tall), with grey to white hair, a ruddy complexion, a bit of middle aged spread, a pleasant smile and kind eyes. I think it was the smile and eyes which saved me from embarrassment and I was able to greet him by name without too long or pregnant a pause. We exchanged some pleasantries and agreed to meet the following day for brunch during the final plenary (which he wasn’t keen on attending as he said he is allergic to politics). The next day he duly found me at 10.30 and we made our way to the cafeteria. I had fallen foul of some food poisoning and he wasn’t hungry, so we made do with a Coke (for me) and black coffee (for him). We found a seat on the balcony, not too far from the restrooms.

When I first met him he was 29 and I was 23. I had just graduated. He had recently been appointed medical superintendent of the large secondary level hospital, the previous incumbent having just retired. Before that he had done some paediatrics (in the absence of a paediatrician) and community medicine – teaching primary health care nurses, servicing the hospital’s 15 or so district clinics. This was at the height (or should one say the depth?) of apartheid. We were working at a hospital designated “black”, by which was meant that white patients went to the smarter, better resourced hospital in the town and black patients came to us. I think that better off black patients went to private hospitals. What Indian patients did I can’t remember – I don’t remember them coming to us.

For an 800 bed hospital, we had 12 interns (I was one of them) and 24 medical officers, many of them just out of internship themselves. There was a wonderful, hardworking, good-humoured, fulltime physician (I hope they have canonised him by now), but no paediatrician (despite a busy paediatric outpatient clinic and a 200 bed paediatric ward). We had a part-time private paediatrician who would willingly dispense advice over the telephone but who only occasionally come out to the hospital. The surgery department had one fulltime specialist and a number of fairly experienced medical officers. Surgery was popular at the hospital – in fact most of the doctors who came to work there did so for the surgical exposure and experience – they weren’t particularly interested in clinical medicine or paediatrics, just in learning how to fix a broken femur or do a hemi-colectomy. Obstetrics and Gynaecology had one rather old, semi retired fulltime specialist, who repaired to the doctors’ overnight rooms for an extended siesta every afternoon, and a number of part timers who “covered” after hours. Lastly, a very grumpy part-time radiologist. That was it, as far as I recall. No orthopaedic surgeon. No psychiatrist. That is what my friend was trying to manage, with little or no relevant training apart from his basic medical degree, and on a salary of maybe 3000 rands a month, when his private GP colleagues were making at least double that and private specialists more than three times as much. One day I shall write about my own time there, but this particular blog is not about me, but about my friend.

Over the years, as I came and went as an employee, he rose through the ranks to Senior Medical Superintendent, then Chief – I half expected them to make him Minister of Health or insist that he move to a bigger hospital. He was good at his job – hard working, meticulous, a good administrator, good people skills. He had a vision for the hospital and despite years, decades of obstruction and underfunding from the Afrikaner Nationalist government’s Health Department in Pretoria and it’s satellite offices and lackeys in the provincial capital, he succeeded in getting funding for hospital improvements, some of them very major. Under his management, doctors came and went, but some senior and excellent ones came and stayed and as a result, decent medicine was practiced and, I believe, a great many lives saved and/or improved. What set him apart from many of our colleagues, to me at least, was that he actually seemed to care about the individuals who came in and went out of the hospital – 60 000 outpatients and 30 000 inpatients a year when I was there. It is so easy to become callous when one is confronted with that much suffering and simultaneously denied any decent tools to try and alleviate it. He didn’t – he just did what he could and returned the next day to do the same. He had compassion, and that made him different. I am not aware that he was in any way religious, although he confessed to having been a member of one or other Student Christian association when at university. So I don’t think it was his faith which motivated him or underpinned his humanity. He was just, as is just, a decent person.

During my last stint of working for him, which is about 15 years ago now, I took over the community doctor post and spent my time running the TB clinic, visiting the TB hospital and visiting and supporting the district clinics. It was the best job I have ever had – a wonderful combination of teaching (the primary care nurses), practising clinical medicine and doing some administration and management. There was even ample scope for research, which I sadly didn’t capitalise on. I gave it all up for better security for my family, better education for my children and a better climate.

He is now 53 and I am 47. I have gone my own way, which I am happy with, and he has stuck by the hospital he helped build up. A few years back he stepped down from being superintendent – a younger, black doctor has taken over. My friend has become the chief medical officer in charge of TB. He spends his days seeing TB patients and I expect teaching the other doctors and nurses about TB. I asked him whether he is ever consulted on institutional management decisions – he shrugged his shoulders and said “If they ask, I am happy to advise, but they don’t often ask”. Which is sad – 30 years of experience apparently going to waste.

As we sat and sipped our drinks, I was reminded of a Magna Carta song which I have long enjoyed. One of the verses goes like this:

Two old friends of mine
Is this all life has left of you?
Who took the laughter, the times
We said what we were going to do?
When we were grown and ready
To take on the world, with a song
And now the tune is one
You can't remember

I remember some of those times with him – we shared a love of the outdoors and a love of fine wine, and I have good memories of evenings spent with him and others at campsites in remote corners of game reserves, chatting around an open fire under the stars, sipping at a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon. In those days it was a question of what we were going to do when we had gotten rid of the white supremacist Afrikaner Nationalist government. Then we would be ready to take on the world, not with a song, but with primary health care, with access for all, with a whole host of other idealisms and impracticalities. Democracy came in 1994. 17 years later, lots has changed. On the other hand, lots hasn’t. One of the things that hasn’t is the quality of medical care available to average black South Africans living in areas such as those served by this hospital. My friend told me of a current and province-wide freeze of medical posts. Also a moratorium on ordering equipment and supplies – this because they overran their budget last year. Essential drugs (such as TB drugs) are now often in short supply or simply out of stock. They still have a paper based TB register. It still takes 6 weeks to get a TB culture result from the laboratory 200km away.

I asked what his plans were. Did he plan to move? When did he plan to retire? Well, he said, he could retire any time from 55, but he is relatively happy and he thinks he’ll stay on, doing what he is doing, making what difference he can. What about the problems with the hospital? He said that one learns to just shrug one’s shoulders like many others have done for so long who work in the SA Public Health Sector. One just says, “Sorry, it is out of stock” or “Sorry, we haven’t received the result” or “Sorry, your child has died.” Because there is really nothing else one can do if one is to remain sane.

Maybe that is what our efforts come to in the end. A shrug of the shoulders. A slumping of the shoulders. A roll of the eyes heavenwards. A sigh of acceptance – acceptance of mediocrity, of the less than ideal, of second best or third best or worse. We let the years of head bashing wear us down until our ideals are blunted, our outlook cynical and whatever energy and motivation we still have, turned inward towards preservation of self and kin.

The song ends:

Two old friends of mine
A dripping tap
And a broken old chair
And if I read between the lines
Someone's lonely
Someone doesn't care
If it's all gone by tomorrow
For tomorrow's been and gone
Like a bird
That has no home

How sad. We can’t remember the tune with which we planned to take on the world. We have lost our ideals, our vision, our dreams. Our Brave New World was stillborn and the tomorrow we envisioned was left stranded with nowhere to land – a bird with no home. How sad.

America

2010-06-06T14:27:00.000+02:00

America

It has been over 2 years since I was in the USA, over 2½ since we left. I think that is mainly a function of the distance. It really is a hell of a long way: 12 hours to Europe and then 7 across the Atlantic plus lead time, layovers and delays on arrival. Getting through it in less than 24 hours in the exception. Or you can do 2 hours to Johannesburg and then the mind numbing 17 hours to New York or Washington, plus 2 hours in Dakar to refuel and to offload/onload passengers and cargo. That’s no better – also 24 hours plus. I prefer the European connection – it just gives you a chance to stretch the legs, get a shower, unwind a bit, have something to eat that doesn’t shout “airport” and “airlines” at you from the other side of the room.

I almost didn’t get there. The day before I was due to leave the UK the Icelandic volcano (she whose name cannot be pronounced) belched forth some more ash and it was touch and go. In the end we left about an hour late, and they had to take us right up north, over Iceland itself (weird as that may sound – the plume was blowing southwards). We got into Dulles, Washington at 8.30 instead of 7.30, which meant that the individual passport control areas had closed for the day and everyone was being channelled through one. I was being picked up by colleagues. As soon as we landed I emailed them (we both have Blackberries), and then periodically emailed updates – when I saw the length of the queue at passport control (6 deep, 90 minute wait), when I got to the front of the queue, when I was waiting for my baggage off the carousel and finally when I got through to say where I was standing. No sign of my friends. It was only then that I noticed that none of the emails had been sent – the hourglass symbol was merrily rotating. The joys of connectivity. We finally found each other and headed off to White Flint, Rockville, where they have an apartment.

It was strange seeing the old familiar sights, US road-signs – no turn on red or the flashing pedestrian crossing indicator with the countdown in seconds next to it, Washington’s road names – Old Georgetown Road, Rockville Pike, the avenues named after states which fan out from the Capitol like the spokes of a bicycle wheel, the streets in downtown DC very sensibly named “G street” or “F street”, the 495, the 270, route 28, and the names of the Metro stations which I had come to know so well over the course of six months of commuting – Friendship Heights, Medical Center, Bethesda, Strathmore, White Flint, Twinbrook, Rockville, Shady Grove: it all started coming back. The next morning my hosts had to go back to the airport and I took the opportunity to explore the neighbourhood. I eventually found the White Flint Mall, after some difficulty, and the Borders Bookshop. The US has 2 great book shop chains – Borders is one, the other is Barnes and Noble. They tend to have multilevel, well stocked shops with coffee shops attached where one can literally spend hours – and lots of money. I found a book by Karen Armstrong I have been looking for. There were lots of others I looked at and could easily have bought but was thinking of the weight of my suitcase going home so restrained myself. Just as well, as it turned out. I got a cinnamon bagel (another great US institution) and cream cheese for the way home. Only problem was there was no knife and the cream cheese came in a tub, so I was reduced to digging it out and licking it off my forefinger in between taking bites of my bagel. Too much detail. It was delicious.

Sunday night we did sushi at a Japanese restaurant on Rockville Pike. Always amazes me how filling it is – those little delicacies which look like a mouthful are really much more than a mouthful. And if you add a bowl of meso soup for starters, it really is a full meal.

The weekdays were full. I was jetlagged and waking at 3, 4, 5 – so it wasn’t much fun. By the end of the week my clock was coming right but by then it was almost time to leave. I think I ate in on only 1 night out of the 8 nights I was there. Thrice I went to friends, once we went to Teeters for pizza, once to Panera’s, once we ate Thai and once Japanese. And then there were lunch dates as well. Twice they bought in pizza for work functions, twice we went out for pizza (once I had crab-cake), once we had curry at the Bombay Kitchen down the road. It was wonderful to see old friends, catch up, share a meal, drink some good red wine ...

The weather played ball and gave us some glorious spring days. It rained once or twice but not for long. I had intended doing some running but got a bad cold just before I left the UK so that messed up my plans. As a result I expect a shock when next I get on the scale at gym, but a few good workouts should sort it out. Can’t wait to get back to it – I feel like a toad! [Post script: I actually lost 3kg!]

I think Saturday was my best day. I started off with 2-3 hours of work, just clearing the desk so to speak. Then I took the metro through to Bethesda where I was going to meet a friend for lunch. We ended up going up to Montgomery Mall to look for a rug (for her) and an iPad (for my brother). The Apple shop was abuzz with people looking at the iPad and there were plenty salespeople trying to sell us one. The only problem was ... they didn’t have any in stock. Not in the shop, not in the city, not in the country, it seemed – sold out! Well I guess that is what you call a successful product. We grabbed a pizza and then she dropped me off back at Bethesda. I caught the metro (I had a day pass) through to the mall and wandered around for an hour or two renewing my acquaintance with the Capitol building, the Washington monument and a host of other fine buildings, but mostly with the vibe of the place – the Mall has a unique atmosphere which is hard to describe – sort of mixture of national pride and joie de vivre. One sees groups of youngsters and not-so-youngsters playing handball, soccer, people jogging, cycling – all in this superb setting with the Capitol in the background. George Washington University was having its graduation ceremony there the following day – right in the middle of the mall, with that magnificent backdrop. Michele Obama was scheduled to speak.

Then I took the metro back to Friendship heights and met some different friends for a sandwich / bowl of soup / cafe latte at Panera’s – something herself and I did I don’t know how many times in our six months there. Before I left I collected a half dozen assorted bagels, two of which I selected to take home – not sure what they will taste like after 20 000km in the hold but the thought is there.

On Sunday I took the Metro to Shady Grove and met some different friends again, who took me to their church nearby. I have been there once before and find it similar enough to ours to suit me. Even knew some of the songs! After church we drove through to Frederick which is about 30km north west. It has a historic town centre, dating back to the 18^th century and the days of the War of Independence and the Civil War I guess – must look it up. Anyway, there are some stunning old townhouses, lots of churches, court houses and the like and, best of all, some really great restaurants. I was told the quiche was wonderful – in the end I opted for tuna salad, thinking about my cholesterol and my girth, but they were both delicious.

Then it was over and I was sitting in the Super Shuttle hurtling toward the airport at some ungodly speed, driven by a guy from West Africa who didn’t seem to know the meaning of “slow down” or “turn down” (the volume). We survived, but I have had better taxi rides. I guess this was half the usual price so I shouldn’t complain. A last cup of Starbucks latte for old time’s sake and then we were boarded and heading out over the Atlantic.

I am not sure when I shall see the USA again. I hope this won’t be the last time. I am fairly sure I don’t want to live there but I certainly enjoy visiting the place. And there is so much more to see – we barely scratched the surface in our time. Didn’t get to the West Coast, nor Florida – didn’t even get to New York. Will have to pull ourselves together.

A site familiar to any Washingtonian: the Metro station. I have heard many Washingtonian friends complain about it - I think it is magnificent, both as an architectural and engineering accomplishment and as a public amenity. A ride costs between $3 and $4 depending on distance and time of day. It is safe, clean and comfortable. What more do they want?

The well known "Smithsonian Castle" in the Mall, the headquarters of the Smithsonian Institute to which the visitor to DC owes so much for free access to magnificent museums and other attractions like the zoo. I have never actually been inside this particular building but have always loved just looking at it and photographing it.

Another of my favourite buildings on the Mall - and this one I have been into. It is the National Museum of the American Indian (www.nmai.si.edu/). I just love the design of the place - the curve of the walls, the stone, the shadows that are cast, the water features, the exhibits. The family didn't particularly bond with this place, but I did.

Is this the best known landmark in the world? Whatever your politics, it is a magnificent building. For me it brings back many good memories of days spent walking around the Mall, eating hotdogs, or ice creams. Or in the heat of summer simply drinking as much water as possible.

Or maybe this is. The Washington Monument. I have always had mixed feelings about it. No doubt it is impressive. One really needs to get up close and intimate to get a true sense of that. In its own way it is beautiful - in its starkness, its sterility. I expect the Freudians and the Jungians have written books about it. What does it signify? Strength and might undoubtedly. Solidness. Massiveness. Uprightness? Last man standing? Loneliness? The odd one out? I don't know - I don't really get it, but it certainly does something to me, even if it doesn't do much for me.