South Africa question

[Zanza]

I've never had any security issues myself, despite going to townships, taking the wrong turn in Johannesburg and driving through really poor looking areas or walking around alone at night. But you hear lots of stories and better off South Africans live in very protected gated communities and in general security is much more visible there than in any other country I've ever been to. My employer doesn't consider South Africa a high-risk country if I remember correctly.

Detroit also has some very poor and somewhat dangerous areas, right? So just behave like you would at home...

[Razgovory]

You can get car-mounted flame throwers!

[Savonarola]

Detroit also has some very poor and somewhat dangerous areas, right?

Not that I know of...





Yes, the city of Detroit has a lot of dangerous areas.

[Hamilcar]

And more general I've been to South Africa a few times for work and one time for tourism. It's a beautiful but very conflicted country. You have really fancy first world villas and shopping malls, but also abject poverty in slums. Just have your security in mind but also do not let it spoil your experience.

I'm surprised Alstom don't classify it as a dangerous country, based on what you and Hamilcar have said.  Colombia was classified as a dangerous country, and outside of the no-man's land in El Paso, it didn't seem that rough.

You couldn't pay me enough to work in South Africa. Nope.

[Admiral Yi]

It probably doesn't help that whereas some East Africans and some West Africans can be pretty hott, South Africans not so much.

[Razgovory]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDrzMGdYWZc

Flame-thrower. 

[Zanza]

It probably doesn't help that whereas some East Africans and some West Africans can be pretty hott, South Africans not so much.

Charlize Theron and Candice Swanepoel come to my mind as über hott. But I guess that's a question of taste.

[Admiral Yi]

 

[Razgovory]

You know what is really hot?  A car that shoots flames at carjackers!

[Savonarola]

The longest flight that Delta airlines offers is from Johannesburg, South Africa to Atlanta, Georgia at 16 hours.  (They've only been able to offer this route stop non-stop since the introduction of the 777; even the 767 ER had to stop for refueling.)  The route from Atlanta to Johannesburg clocks in at an hour less.  Even so fifteen hours in cattle class in a middle seat is a miserable experience; I can tell you that from first-hand experience.

I had gotten the middle seat because I booked my flight so late; I went on a Sunday and had made reservations on Friday.  I wasn't supposed to be going to South Africa at all.  Originally our project was going to be five people: Bill, the project manager, an on-board engineer, a mechanical engineer, a communications engineer and an expert in our Incremental Train Control System (ITCS.)  Our project is being funded out of our Latin American market, and when the Program Manager looked at the cost of sending five people to Africa he said ¡NO!  So the team was reduced to three the expert in ITCS, the on-board engineer and Bill.  Then office politics intervened and the team was to be two experts in ITCS and Bill.

One of the ITCS cancelled about a week before departure, and Bill was able to get his on-board engineer.  Then on the Thursday before departure Hani came to my office near the end of the day and said that Bill had come to our co-worker Glen's office and told him to make flight arrangements to South Africa.  I thought, "Better him than me," but I wasn't really surprised when Glen and our boss, Jeremy called me that evening.  The purpose of taking a communications engineer on the trip was to design radio location and rooftop antenna placement.  Glen had never done that before, and I had done half a dozen so...

So I was on a flight to South Africa sandwiched between two strangers.  The one at the window fidgeted throughout the flight, the one on the aisle slept like death; making it difficult to sleep and impossible to get up.

Bill had a much better flight than I did.  He had managed to charm a South African native who was now living in New York.  I ended up as a third wheel in their conversation while in line for passport control.  She had planned out an entire trip of southern Africa for him; and would have invited him to dinner with her family had they been staying longer.  She used "Shame" as a repeated word, meaning "What a shame," not "You should be ashamed."

The third member of our group was Max.  Max had transferred from being an on-board engineer to the safety group in the depths of our first Colombian adventure.  Then he discovered there are worse things than the jungle; ennui for one.  With eyes brimming with involuntary tears he transferred back to on board engineering.

We were surprised at how dry and comfortable Johannesburg was; even though it is just two degrees south of the Tropic of Capricorn.  This is because Johannesburg is 1700 m above mean sea level (AMSL.)  Our work site was in Pretoria, about 50 Km north of Johannesburg.  Even though it didn't seem like a huge drop heading there it's at about 1300 m AMSL.  It still had a pleasant climate.

The project we were working on was an extension of our Colombia project.  Holotrade Atlantico was going to run freight from the port in Santa Marta all the way 700 Km up the tracks to a depot.  There's a wash out just past that, so the trains cannot go all the way to Bogota; so containers are broken down and loaded on to trucks at the depot.  In order to run over FeNoCo territory (the first 200 klicks) they have to put on a Tetra radio system and an ITCS on their trains.  Holotrade is buying locomotives from Transnet, South Africa's national rail carrier.  Transnet in turn was refurbishing locomotives used in mining in Australia (mining commonly uses the same narrow gauge as the lines in Colombia.)  The whole thing sounded like the epitome of Globalization; an Anglo-American company running Australian locomotives refurbished in South Africa on lines in Colombia with a system from a French company, who managed their project from Mexico and got expertise from a team in the United States.  It made me a little sad to discover that Transnet had a "Buy South Africa" requirement in their charter.

The Transnet production facility looked like something straight out of the empire when Victoria reigned.  It was a large campus with buildings were brick with metal roofs.  They had their own recreation club, boxing club and school for training technicians.  There were even a couple of steam powered locomotives out front for decoration.

When I got to our introductory meeting I realized I still held prejudices about South Africa and that they were far out of date when I found myself surprised that everyone wearing a suit was black and everyone wearing cover-alls was white.  We watched a little introductory video on Transnet; which, unlike the mines in Colombia, didn't talk about how much they loved the environment; but did tout their AIDS research and prevention programs.

The reason that we had come right then to South Africa was because Holotrade had complained to the Colombian government that we were dragging our feet helping them.  This was causing problems for Alstom Latin America; so we had to go to prove that we were working.  As it turns out we were simply the scapegoat.  We learned Transnet did not have the bid for the locomotives yet; they were competing with GE Brazil for the bid and due to the delays in the bidding process Holotrade was behind schedule.  Also it turned out that all the information we had given to Holotrade hadn't been sent on; Transnet viewed our system as a type of sorcery.  Likewise the information Transnet had sent to Holotrade hadn't made it to us.  As it turns out their locomotives were huge and had only a couple minor differences in operation from the ones we had used in Colombia.  Some of the locomotives in Colombia had taken us a week to do just the onboard design; we finished this one in an afternoon.

While South Africa has eleven official languages; everyone we ran into spoke English... sort of.  There accents were thick and hard to understand and they used British vocabulary.  Max and I had the hardest time understanding one of the engineers as he explained we could hook up one of our pneumatic lines to the "Hooter valve."  As it turns out that was the lines which controlled what an American would call the horn.  (Later we would see a sign in a handicap space which told one to "Hoot for assistance.")  When the South Africans didn't understand us Bill would immediately launch into his (very bad) Spanish.  Then Max and I would lean forward and just about go into Spanish to explain what Bill had meant (as we had done many times in Colombia) only to pull back in realization that the person spoke no Spanish.  This happened three or four times.

Since we were only in South Africa three days we didn't get to go out much.  The first day we went to the mall by our hotel; the second we got the hotel buffet, which was free and worth every penny and the last day there was a general strike in Pretoria so we ended up at the mall again.  The reason that there was a general strike is that it was Jacob Zuma's birthday.  While the ANC is well liked in the country, it's hated in the cities.  The opposition parties called for protests, and many businesses closed down fearing the violence which had accompanied protests in the past.  These didn't materialize and the protests were entirely peaceful.

Many people work in the cities and live there during the week, but have homes in villages; for this reason Pretoria empties out during the weekend.  Among these people Zuma and the ANC is still popular.  Our hotel staff had Zuma's birthday celebration on television.  Another member of the ANC gave a loud, off key rendition of "Happy Birthday" to Zuma; the staff actually applauded at the end of that.

Even though we only ate at the mall I did manage to sample some South Africa cuisine.  They have a way of naming things, one of my favorites was a tangy barbecue sauce called "Monkey Gland Sauce."  There was also a mixed vegetable relish with the marvelous name "Chakalaka."  Curries, British chutney and the native hot pepper sauce Peri-Peri are widely available.  The native sausage is called Boerwors (Afrikaans for "Farmer Sausage") and there's a toffee pudding called Malva Pudding.  All together it's a weird and wonderful cross of British, Dutch, African, Malaysian and Indian cuisines.

They also have a native liqueur called Amarula which is a cream liqueur made from the marula berry.  I went to a liquor stores in search of this.  Like Detroit there was a number of homeless people begging in front of the liquor store.  Unlike Detroit there was an angry white guy yelling at them ("Get away from that car.  Is that your car?  I'll kick your ass!") while a number of the other store employees held sticks and glowered at them.  The homeless mosied on, but were back in a few minutes.  I did find my bottle of Amarula, the cashier was astounded that my credit card didn't require a PIN, and had to call over her manager to make sure it was okay.

While Amarula was wonderful and mild; the coffee was usually instant and always bad.  I assumed that they were a tea drinking culture; but the natives assured me that everyone drank coffee.

We finished so early that we had time to go on a Safari our final day.  We went to the Pilanesberg National Park; which is large (220 square miles) and is settled on the crater of an extinct volcano.  We drove there, through the Northwest province.  Here 80% of the worlds platinum is mined.  There's also a large sunflower farming industry.

Bill, Max and I all based our expectation of the third world on Colombia.  We all marveled how clean the country was and that they had actual highways.  There were shanty towns, especially near the mines and there were people selling oranges and pecans on the side of the road.  The smelting operations near the mines had huge pillars of flame shooting out from their chimneys.  Still there were several nice homes in the villages.  Our driver explained to us that these were the people who worked in the city and built their homes in villages.  Land was parceled out for free for people born in the village.  Every Sunday the village elders would meet and hash out issues in the village including property allocation.

The park itself was amazing; Bill said it was almost as good as Disney's Wilderness Adventure.  We saw springbok, hippo, impala, elephants, wildebeest, warthog, brown hyena and even a rhino.  Rhino are endangered and even in the park often fall prey to poachers.  The poachers are after the horn for the Chinese black market.  The South Africans have brought Chinese officials to the park to plead with them to do more to crack down on the trade, but so far nothing has come of it.

We also stopped by a market, Bill's wife had seen a purse that she liked that was from South Africa.  Bill didn't know the brand or anything, but he got his wife on facetime and showed her the purses that they had available.  He started with the ones he knew she wouldn't like so she'd be worn down and less choosy by the end.  They've been married for almost forty years.

I did have an aisle seat on the way home.  I slept hard on that flight, probably to the annoyance of the person in the middle.  Even so that was still a long, uncomfortable flight.

[Jacob]

It probably doesn't help that whereas some East Africans and some West Africans can be pretty hott, South Africans not so much.

Charlize Theron and Candice Swanepoel come to my mind as über hott. But I guess that's a question of taste.

How about the girl from Die Antwoord?

[Monoriu]

Thanks for the update Sav.  Haven't seen you in a while 

Europeans are usually surprised that our credit cards have no PIN as well, so I am used to that. 

My solution to the long flight problem is to bring a laptop loaded with anime. 

I never get how people can charm strangers on a flight.  I think my body language makes it quite clear that I am not interested in any conversation beyond 'I want chicken, thank you.'

[Admiral Yi]

I was talking about black South Africans Jacob.

White South Africans can be screaming hott.

[The Brain]

I don't see color. I see the person.

[Jacob]

I was talking about black South Africans Jacob.

White South Africans can be screaming hott.

Ah... where are the prettiest Black women from, in your opinion?