Africa — Page 18

Driving the not “right” side in South Africa

February 22, 2010 By Danny

Preparing to drive for the first time was more than a bit stressful. As I tested out all the controls to make sure I knew where they were, we had the following conversation:

D: Right, that’s the blinker, not the shifter.
(Car eased out of parking space in first, into the wrong lane.)
J: You’re on the right side.
D: So I am…..was that the wrong right or the right left?
J: Better practice using the blinkers.
(Wipers go on. Somehow we make it out of the parking lot. Approaching turn.)
J: Put on your blinker.
(Wipers go on again. Then wrong blinker.)
D: This is a left, that means its a short turn and I’m going to stay on this side of the street.
J: Good, you’re on the right side.
D: What (swerve) I’m on the left.
J: Left, that’s what I meant.
(Some time, and a few ostrich, pass.)
D: Shit, now its raining.
J: At least you know where the wipers are.
(Blinker goes on.)

And so it went, somehow we’ve survived a month of driving already and to be honest it has been a pleasure. Our car is little, so little in fact that it isn’t even sold in the US. With all four cylinders contributing to a massive 1.1L engine it struggles a bit on the big hills. Most of which are on one-lane highways. People here use the shoulders to allow others to pass. Although this is something we’ve seen everywhere we’ve been since Mexico, this is the first time I’ve actually driven in it and it is rather nice. If I scoot over for someone I can expect them to flash their hazards once they’ve passed me, saying ‘thank you’ and I am to respond with a flash of my high beams to say ‘you’re welcome.’ Oncoming cars will also scoot into the shoulder to allow more space in that imaginary center lane.

After 9 months through Latin America we only rented a vehicle once, and that was our final week with others doing the driving. It may seem surprising then that we’ve had our own set of wheels here in South Africa, driving on the left side of the road and all, for 6 weeks through 4 countries. The decision was a financial one, along the main route the car for two was cheaper than bus, which has allowed us to explore far more of the country while allowing us to camp and cook ourselves everywhere we’ve gone.

The thing I like the least about having the car is that, like the backpacks, our entire life is inside of it. The difference is that the backpacks are never left out of our sight in public whereas we frequently leave the car in public parking lots. Theft and vandalism here is such a problem that most parking lots have attendants in each lane to guard the cars…a service that you “optionally” pay for when you return to your car. We’ve seen this in other countries (Brazil, Argentina, etc) but needing to payoff the guard is something that still seems alien to us.

We’ve made it this far without a problem, driving through South Africa, Swaziland, Lesotho, and finally Namibia. Sometimes we find ourselves on the right (wrong) side of the road, and the wipers continue to make non-raining appearances, but otherwise we’re doing OK. The most amazing thing though, is when we’re approaching an intersection and Jill says “make a left at the light” and we both know that means to make a right.

Foodie Friday: The wines of Stellenbosch

February 19, 2010 By Jillian

Forgive us, but we figured it was ok to highlight wine instead of food this week. The existence of wine in the Cape Colony is no coincidence. Sailors long at sea often demanded wine in order to herd off scurvy and other fun diseases. Almost immediately upon founding the colony expeditions were went to the ‘frontier’ to find suitable land for agriculture, wine chief amongst the concerns of colonists, even though grapes had already been planted closer to town. The industry here got an added boost at the start of the 19th century when Britain and France were at war. Today pinotage is the king South Africa varietal, a hybrid of pinot noir and cinsault grapes, making it a light and fruity red wine.

The nicest part of the tastings in Stellenbosch was their format. Although we are from professionals, we’ve been to quite a few wine tours now. Generally the format for these things is to show up, stand at the bar while the bartender pours your new taste and tells you about the varital, remain standing while drinking, and quickly downing or dumping the remainder so that the bartender can begin the next taste. Not so in Stellenbosch.

At the first vineyard, we were handed a menu, told to choose our first selection, handed glasses and invited to sit on the patio. When we were ready for our next we got up and made our selection. If we wanted to try each Chardonnay, a second glass was given to us so that we could compare them side by side. Given that the tastes were quite substantial, and we each were allotted 5, we were there for quite awhile which kept us from visiting too many other vineyards. The second winery just sat us down, brought us each three glasses, filled them up, and gave us each a piece of chocolate to go with each wine. Can’t beat that.

Perhaps the reason for the difference is the age of the the South African vineyards (the first were planted around 1650) when compared with everything we’ve ever had in the Americas but I’ve gotta say…. Mendoza, Argentina needs to take note.

Sharks vs. Chiefs

February 18, 2010 By Danny

Opening game of the season, the Sharks of Durban taking on the Chiefs of….New Zealand?

Yes, thats how sport works outside of the USA. Sure you can play against your countrymen but that isn’t nearly as fun as mixing in the other countries as well. The Sharks are one of 5 South African professional teams that play not only for the domestic championship (alongside several other lesser teams as well) but in the Super 14 League of teams including Australia and New Zealand. (Argentina is due to join shortly bringing the number of teams even higher)

The game opened up as a rather boring game with each team kicking the ball back and fourth and back and fourth…it actually seemed as though we were watching a soccer match. The reason for all the kicking was that it was pouring and kicking in the rain is easier than catching and throwing the ball. No one could make it to the end zone instead kicking it through the uprights on penalties twice each, leaving the score at an even 6-6 at halftime.

The stadium was pretty similar to any NFL stadium. Perhaps a bit smaller, and with a much lower ticket price, it was every bit as enjoyable. The food for sale was generally the same, plenty of beer on tap, but men walking around with biltong instead of cotton candy. The stadium was in the shadow of the new world cup soccer stadium across the way, and there were jerseys for sale in the stadium shop.

After the half the game was very different with each team running and rucking the ball. The sharks never made it into the try zone but managed to kick three more times making the 15 – 6. Then a break-away and suddenly the Chiefs were threatening to put a try on the board, the Sharks held though and kept holding, eventually kicking the ball away in what could be described as a brilliant goal-line defense. Eventually though, there was another break-away and before we knew it the Chiefs had scored their try, made their conversion, and were leading by one point with 2 minutes remaining on the clock.

The next minute and a half was flurry of rugby and somehow, with 30 seconds remaining the Sharks (that’s the home team, remember) drove most of the way to the goal, were awarded a penalty kick, and were suddenly ahead by 2 points. The crowd was wild and rowdy, the rain still pouring down and as the final thirty seconds ticked down…game over! But wait. After the clock expired the referee was there, on the field, blowing his whistle awarding those Chiefs a penalty of their own…they kicked and it was good…leaving the crowd boo-ing the Aussie ref out of the stadium as the Chiefs took the win in “overtime.”

Invictus

February 17, 2010 By Danny

Before seeing Invictus, the new movie about the 1995 South African rugby team, I would have told you that Rudy was the greatest sports movie ever made. Having now seen Invictus I still think Rudy is the greatest sports movie ever made….not because Invictus was worse, but because Invictus isn’t a movie about sports, it is a movie about South Africa.

For those of you who haven’t seen the movie, I won’t spoil it for you but I will offer a small summary. Starring Matt Damon as the captain of the Springboks (the national rugby team of South Africa) and Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela (if you don’t know who he is then shame on you) the movie describes how the Springboks were lead to an improbably Rugby World Cup victory (this is history, you can look it up, I’m still not ruining the movie) just one year after South Africa became a democracy in 1994.

But like I said, its not a sports movie, its a South African movie.

One of our first posts to this blog after we arrived here in South Africa was about Apartheid and our initial impressions. Despite it being the Christmas season, we posted it anyway as it was something that was “in our face” and so we felt we should put it out there right away as such. We see its affects when we talk to whites who were passed up for jobs on account of the South African version of Affirmative Action (called Black Economic Empowerment) and when we meet blacks and coloreds who still hold deep hatred in their hearts for all things white.

Sure the ANC (Mandela’s political party) still holds power over the country but that doesn’t mean the average black has the same opportunities as the average white. When we see the nice cars, its the whites behind the wheel, and the blacks walking down the to clean a house or stand as a security guard. This is the division that still exists today and it is far from unique.

The movie Invictus shows us this disparity in a way only a movie can. At the start of the movie we see white boys at a prep school playing rugby while black boys in rags play soccer across the street, two worlds apart. At various points towards the end of the movie we see whites and blacks playing rugby together. This is the coming together that South Africa continues to grow from in a way that IS unique.

This is a movie about coming together as a people: Not red versus blue; not black versus white, not Jew versus Muslim, and not Montague versus Capulet. It is a story of what can be accomplished people who choose to work together rather than against one another.

Rules of Rugby for Americans

February 16, 2010 By Danny

We’re talking about Rugby this week so it seems right to actually explain how its played. No, Rugby is not Football without pads. Yes, it is rumored to have its origins on a soccer pitch at Rugby College in England. Actually, versions of the game go back hundreds of years despite only being codified in 1845.

Despite being even less popular in the USA than soccer, it is a surprisingly simple game to be able to follow as a spectator. The best way I know to explain it is to imagine 30 grown men, on a big field, playing an organized version of kill the man with the ball. The basics are simple. With the ball in your hand you can run wherever you’d like, generally your teammates will be disappointed with you though if you run any direction other than forward toward the goal (called a try) zone. You can kick the ball forward as well but you can never throw the ball forward, only backward. You’re free to kick the ball backward as well but again, your teammates will be very angry with you if you do that. When you have the ball and are tackled (again, your teammates will have preferred the ball to have been passed backward to someone else) you are allotted one quick motion and must let go of the ball almost immediately. If no one is around you are more than welcome to pick the ball up again and continue running but chances are that this is not the case. Some of your teammates are probably right behind you (having been looking for that pass) and some of the opposing team are in front of you as you lays helpless on the ground. Pretty soon these two groups of big, burly men will run into eachother, forming a ‘ruck’ right above you, as you lay trying to protect your helmet less head and face from the array of steel-toed rugby cleats.

One group (hopefully your teammates who if your lucky have forgiven you for not passing the ball and making them ruck/work) will push the other out of the way and someone else will pick up the ball and the cycle will start again, hopefully with a little more passing this time.

This is how the game is played. Cycle after cycle, ruck after ruck. It is grueling but it is a good time, exceptional workout, and a phenomenal way to geft out frustration. At any time, any player on the field can carry the ball, tackle, ruck, kick, pass, or bounce the ball to drop-kick it through the uprights for a 3 point field goal. To score a 5 point try you must not only get the ball to the opposing teams try-zone (just like in football) but you must also touch the ball to the ground. If you get tackled first, tough luck. If you touch the ball way out by the sideline, guess what, your team’s kicker has to kick for the 2 point conversion (think extra point) from just as close to the sideline as you touched the ball down to the ground. This means that merely scoring will not leave your teammates happy with you if your team needed all 7 (that’s 5 and 2) of those precious points.

But that’s not all there is to the game. Sometimes the ball goes out of bounds and needs to be thrown back in. To do this in Rugby the team that didn’t take it out of bounds gets to throw it but the thrower must throw the ball straight down a one meter “tunnel” between the two teams. The thrower must throw it straight, no favoritism, but can throw it as far as he wants which means only his team knows how far its going. Both teams will hoist players into the air to fight and contend for the ball with the ground remaining far below. Sometimes players do stupid things like throw the ball forward, or just miss catching it and knock it forward with their outstretched fingers. There are tons of penalties that can be called and when they are one of two things happens. Either the other team gets the ball with a free 10 meters to run before the offending team can touch them, or there is a scrum. A scrum is a more organized form of the ruck where half of each time literally butts shoulders with the other. Like I said, this is organized even though it might not look it. One player, the scrum-half, on the team awarded the scrum (the non-offending team) places the ball into the middle of the scrum on the side of the scrum that gives his team the advantage in hooking the ball. The player front and center of of each teams scrum is the hooker and the hooker with his leg hooks the ball once its thrown into the scrum toward the back of the scrum. In the back of the scrum the scrum-half again is the one to touch the ball, taking it out and passing it to his teammate when he sees fit.

Generally, Rugby is a surprisingly simple sport to both watch and play. It can get confusing when watching scrums and line-outs (the ball being thrown back in bounds) for the first time but hopefully this far from complete outline helps you to think of rugby as more than just football without pads.

Driving the not “right” side in South Africa

Foodie Friday: The wines of Stellenbosch

Sharks vs. Chiefs

Invictus

Rules of Rugby for Americans

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