Mike Jutan's World: South Africa: Arrival and Day 1

Sunday, June 29, 2008

South Africa: Arrival and Day 1

We arrived in Johannesburg last night, and lots of people met us at the airport. My Uncle Allan (Affie) and his wife Glenda met us at the airport, along with my Granny Leah, and Uncle Jimmy, Cousin James and Aunt Denise (Mookie).

We drove back to their house and had a nice dinner with my Granny, Mookie, Jimmy and James. It was so nice to chat and just SO cool to be here. Mookie told us about how there has been "power sharing" recently, and the government has been scheduling 3 hr time blocks where they just turn of ALL your power to conserve energy. Kinda like daily scheduled rolling blackouts. Crazy. She also told us that if you "run a bath", you need to run the next one right afterwards, or all the hot water is gone for at least 2 hrs... she said "Remember... you're in Africa now!" And giggled a lot. Funny. Lots of things already remind me how different it is in Canada, and especially in the USA. The idea of the government forcing you to conserve energy by shutting off all your city's power for several hours in the middle of the day, or at night when you're trying to cook dinner... wow. I can't imagine that ever happening in the USA. Yet people here seem frustrated, they say, "Well, what can you do?" and they live with it. Seems like the over-consumers in America could benefit from living here for a month or two...

Anyhow, social commentary aside - we had some nice tea and chilled out and then went to bed pretty early, and slept for ages.

This morning we got up and had an amazing breakfast outside in the sun, it rocked. Then gave some presents and took off to pick up Granny. We saw her apartment, it seems quite nice. Norm and I are going to spend some time with just Granny tomorrow morning and cook some breakfast with her. She is so happy to see us, and was so excited last night at the airport she said she was shaking. Shame. :) Anyway it will be awesome. Then saw a pic of my Dad, Granny and his 2 brothers when they were teenagers, it looks so funny. We took it so we can scan it.

Then to Uncle Affie's house as it is his birthday today. We saw LOTS of wild and interesting things on the way, the craziest of which is something called a "Taxi" - it is sortof like a mini-bus, which zooms around on the road, drives very badly, and cuts off cars all the time. People flag it down at random places (it doesn't have any normal stops) and it just stops. The "hoot" their horns all the time. It is very disorganized, over-packed, and crazy. It also appears to be a Blacks-only transport. Although it's not specifically segregated, only Blacks take it. We've only been here a day, and you certainly see these kind of old remnants of apartheid still lingering here.

Uncle Affie's house was hilarious and totally crazy!! He is a big character, and he has 9 cats, like 7 dogs and 5 birds, and 1 rabbit. It was soooo funny, and the animals were awesome. It was a bit like a petting zoo, and I suggested he open up a petting zoo and his huge guard dog could be the bouncer.

We had a great time, met Uncle Affie's wife for the first time, and a step-cousin of mine, and Mark Jutan (our first cousin, Affie's son) showed up with his wife Bea, who we haven't met yet. She was ecstatic about the Yoda card I gave to Affie for his birthday.

We dropped off Granny, then back home. Then Shelly and Clive picked us up. Shelley went to high school and then to Teacher's College in South Africa with my Mom. We met them ages ago, and they were very nice and took us out for some nice food. I got a Bagel and Lox with a Kola Tonic (awesome South African drink) and Norm got a crazy Biltong Salad with a Peartizer drink, sooooo good!!!!!!!

Then back home and then out to watch James's Youth Group play in their Youth Band, it was really good and James led the service too, and rocked out on his guitar - he's very good!!

Then home again for dinner and tea. And now the blogging. Now I'm caught up so I'm gonna try to stay as current as I can on the blog so I don't have to spend hours blogging every night here. :)

Now for lots of photos.