STICK a few mine dumps in Manhattan, and what have you got? Manhattan with mine dumps. Don’t try to kid me this is Africa! Roaring traffic instead of roaring lions? And what happened to the chirping crickets and croaking bullfrogs which were supposed to lull me to sleep at night? Sleep? Who could sleep at all, with a fire–station for a next-door neighbour? What on earth was I doing in Johannesburg anyway?
Well, it was a change from a small town in England and a change, so everyone agreed, was what I needed. Widowed, emotionally if not legally, at the age of 23, I had somehow survived the loneliness and the sympathy for long enough to convince the powers-that-be that my application for an overseas transfer was not just an attempt to run away from reality. And, towards the end of 1971, the Johannesburg office had actually asked the company for which I worked, for an expert in closed circuit television and computers.
The company, in its great wisdom, hauled me out of my educational TV sales pigeonhole, introduced me briefly to a computer, labelled me `Expert for Export’ and packed me off to meet my fate.
So here I was, armed with a degree in modern languages, a reasonable working knowledge of electronics and 19 pieces of assorted luggage, all packed into a small room on the top floor of a residential hotel next to the Hillbrow Fire Station. Not my idea of the ‘Great African Adventure’!
Of course, my ideas of what to expect were rather confused, having been gleaned from very varied sources. I hadn’t, until relatively recently, thought about South Africa as my destination for adventure. That I would, one day, set out to conquer the world – or at least make a landfall somewhere sunnier than Chelmsford – had been firmly in my mind from a pretty early age.
My paternal grandfather’s family had commuted between England and Manitoba, but Canada seemed to me to be something of an extension of the United States and, anyway, it has lousy weather.
My maternal grandmother sailed away to South Africa to join her fiancé after World War I and is reputed to have taken one look at him and had her bags taken straight back on board for the return journey.
When I was about seven, we nearly moved to Uganda and, 10 years later, we nearly moved to Nigeria. So mine was a legacy of frustrated wanderlust in the vague direction of Africa. My determination to see South Africa began when pop singer Manfred Mann told me: “Don’t go there – you’ll hate it!”
But I was, of course, given all sorts of misleading information, total untruths and muddled advice. I was led to believe that what is now known as ‘the K word’ was a perfectly acceptable description of an indigenous South African. I was told that all shops were segregated except OK Bazaars and that blacks were not allowed to walk on the sidewalk. (I wasn’t sufficiently gullible to swallow this last bit of disinformation.)
I was warned about black and white toilets, but the warning was incomplete. Landing at Cape Town en route for Johannesburg, I was faced with separate facilities for not only black and white but also at least two shades in between. Having just got off the mailship after a 10-day cruise through the tropics, I was a great deal browner than many of the ‘in-betweens’ and was directed to the wrong door.
I had been met at the docks and whisked off to the Harbour Café for lunch. Having had breakfast on board, I chose a light snack of crab salad, expecting a spoonful of crabmeat on a bed of lettuce. What I got was a whole crab, so enormous that the lettuce had to have a plate of its own.
It was my first introduction to South African helpings and I have never ceased to be amazed at the amount of food the average white South African can put away. A Texan steak is nothing compared to an Afrikaner’s cut of cooked cow!
HAVE YOUR SAY
Like our Facebook page, follow us on Twitter and Instagram
For news straight to your phone, add us on BBM 58F3D7A7 or WhatsApp 082 421 6033
