Coming to America

Day 49 - Tuesday July 13th, Joburg and the Atlantic Ocean

We got up today, packed up our stuff, said goodbye to our middle-aged (and adorable) Venezuelan roommates, and checked out of the Ball n Kicka hostel for the third and final time.

We had to carry our stuff around all day and wanted to pick up a few more things, so didn't have a lot planned. We headed to what turned out to be the rich people mall in the northern suburb of Sandton. I don't think I've ever seen so many high end jewelry stores in one place. We picked up a couple gifts and tried to get our VAT refund. After close to 2 hours in line, we decided we weren't going to get seen before the place closed and so just headed to the airport early, arriving five hours before our plane was to depart. After dinner, we figured we might as well check in since we had nothing better to do. It was a good thing we did since between two hours in line to check in and another two in the VAT refund line (we better buy the sweetest thing available with those 20 bucks), we just had a few minutes to kill before boarding (and only then because the flight got delayed almost an hour). We decided we'd basically been in line from 1-9pm. An exciting way to end the trip, to be sure. Especially since these were lines South African style, which means every rule you thought applied to lines was wrong.

I don't know that we're excited to leave as we've had a great time, but I think we've both reached a level of frustration with some African-isms that we'll be happy to be leaving behind. One of the top  two is certainly the feeling of being hassled all the time - I think Brian mentioned in a previous post about feeling like people viewed him as a walking dollar sign and I feel like that kind of experience has only become more common. The second is the whole culture of negotiation that just doesn't fit well with an American's sensibilities about how monetary transactions should work. While some people relish bargaining at the market, it gets annoying when every time you take a cab you have to have a confrontation as you attempt to figure out just how high a white person price the cab driver has quoted you. (An aside - a white South African before the game in PE angrily, and profanely, demanded the "African price" for a pack of cigarettes at a convenience store). Coming to the airport today, the cabbie was insisting on 450 rand (about 60 USD). The fact that he settled for 300 Rand (about 40 USD) after a few minutes of arguing (and presumably was still profiting at that price) really underscored how ridiculous his first offer was. When you have experiences like that at least daily, you start to feel like everyone's out to rip you off, which isn't an awesome way to go through life. There's other small cultural differences that just begin to wear you down after a while.

On the plus side for South Africa, the World Cup really was well done and I think went a long way to dispelling fears that an African host country couldn't pull it off. I think there's rightfully a lot of pride in all of Africa about how well it went. (A counter argument to that is that given SA's limited infrastructure and remote location, the tournament was inaccessible to the masses of the world because of the relative high expenses compared to other Cups. Obviously there's no real stats on this, but anecdotal evidence has suggested that a lot less foreigners came to this Cup without tickets in hand, thus cutting down on untamed crowds outside stadiums, etc.. on the flip side, it was also a Cup that was very accessible to a lot of South Africans, who had special, cheaper, tickets exclusively available to them. Not sure where I'm going here; pretty sure I've just entered rambling territory. Exiting now.)

I've had a great time experiencing the World Cup; it's easy to see how people get addicted and go to Cup after Cup. We've spoken with people from Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Ghana, Nigeria, Portugal, Spain, England, Sweden, Norway, Russia, France, Germany, Slovenia, Algeria, Tunisia, Bangladesh, Korea, Australia, Tazmania, and I'm sure others I'm forgetting right now. We've had meals in Spanish and taxi rides in French. We got to cheer on America not once, but twice, in very very exciting games. We've cursed referees, opposing players, and the fashion sense of the Dutch with the best of them. We saw close to every game live and eight in person (okay, seven for me, but it's the thought that counts). We've taken Greyhound SA more times than we care to remember, tested out the Cape Town matatus and Joburg buses, and gone to games in five different stadiums. We saw two oceans as well as springboks, zebras, baboons, ostriches, penguins, dassies, and all kinds of birds (ask Brian, he loves the birds). So despite any difficulties and annoyances we might have run into, I think South Africa treated us to a pretty good time.