h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I received a phone call from Sandie the insurance broker (not Sandile) last night as I was relaxing in a favourite drinking-hole with a few Castles. (Castle is the most popular SA beer. It has a nice malty taste, as well as being pure - it is brewed with only barley malt, maize, hops and water, with no artificial preservatives or additives. So no headache afterwards.) She has got me a very good deal on my car insurance. So I am expecting to go and collect my car this morning. It is just on 9 o'clock now and I am expecting a phone call from Deon at the car place.

As I was drinking my Castles I was served by a pretty young Xhosa woman and I thanked her for the beer in Xhosa: "enkosi". Her eyes went all wide and she asked me if I spoke Xhosa, in Xhosa. I was able to answer her that I spoke a little: "Ndithetha isiXhosa kancinci". She then asked me something that I didn't understand. I told her I didn't understand... "andiqondi"... so she then asked me something like How did you learn Xhosa? I told her "Ndifundile isiXhosa ngencwadi" which means "I learned Xhosa from a book", which is true, I spent all of the Lent before last learning Xhosa from a book sitting 6000 miles away from Cape Town, in Leeds. Her eyes went all wide again and she said in English That's good. All the black women serving in the bar wanted to speak to me then! One of them was a proud Zulu woman who told me that she was a model in Cape Town and that she spoke all 11 official languages of South Africa. The little pretty one told me that I must come here again whenever I wanted to practise my Xhosa. It is so easy to make friends in South Africa.

Anyway it's 9.12 am and I still have heard nothing from Deon but I confidently expect to hear from him later on. I might even go down there later even if I don't hear from him. I will have to take a trip to Somerset Mall and buy things like a map book of Cape Town and Stellenbosch and AA membership.

I bought a map book at the local CNA. Then I had a wimpy burger, which wasn't very nice. I can't wait for my kitchen to arrive so that I can start cooking again. I went down to see Deon but apparently Francois, the lawyer who is supposed to have been making the payment of funds over to the car dealers, went off to Mossel Bay and wasn't in the office today. I wish he had done the business before he went off to Mossel Bay. I wonder how much longer I'm going to have to wait for him to get his act together?

I drank 4 beers in town this afternoon and slept during PM Live. This is the main English radio station's afternoon news programme. They devoted the whole programme to the London bomb blasts.

I also went to the traffic department and tried to renew my driving licence which expired on the 22nd of last month. Because I was too late in renewing it, I had to get a temporary driving licence and now have to wait some 4 weeks for them to get me a new driving licence. At extra cost, of course. I think it's a money making scam. Why couldn't they just give me a new licence? Oh well, at least I have a driving licence again even though it's not a proper one. The SA driving licence is a credit card - without the silly piece of paper which makes a mockery of the British one.

Getting a driving licence is quite fun in South Africa. You have to have your photo taken, then you have an eye test by which you have to squint into a machine and read off some numbers. Then they take thumbprints on both hands. Then you have to go and pay. I ended up paying R140 at the traffic dept today, which was fortuitous, because I only had R140 on me. The new licence costs R100, and the temporary one costs R40.

I have started a routine of having breakfast at the Cafe Nouveau. They do a nice English Breakfast - 2 fried eggs, some bacon, two sausages and a tomato and a mushroom. I put my eggs on the wholemeal toast provided. Together with juice and a coffee it costs R27. I think it's good value. I pay R30 and let her have the change. Always the same waitress, she's very friendly. I went to the same place this afternoon for a beer and they charged me R10 for a Windhoek. Elsewhere in town it costs R9 or R9.50

Sandile and the family came round this evening. They brought fish and chips. But they didn't stay. We played some games - word games, one called "A chicken laid an egg" which we played in Xhosa and then some other games, then we played charades. You can have a lot of fun if you have a family with small children. The kids are absolutely delightful, it makes me want to cry how sweet they are. I don't think I would be able to cope with having children - I would be too worried that the world would corrupt their sweetness, or that they would end up hurt. Their names are Nqobile (9) and Sandiswa (8). They speak perfect, mother-tongue English - better than their parents, for whom English is something like a 3rd language. Which gives rise to the amusing situation that sometimes they understand me better than Sandile or Monica do, and they have to interpret for me! They are fully bilingual in Xhosa and English and help me with Xhosa.

They wouldn't stay but went off to their "hotel" which is the offices where they work. They have been staying in that place for a while. So at last I have my privacy back. Well, I think I will have my privacy back. Last time I went to bed on my own at the flat, they turned up at 11pm.

I'm not complaining, they are welcome to sleep on my floor anytime, it's just that naturally I am a solitary kind of person and unused to the kind of communal living that Africans take for granted. The problem is that we all have to cram into one tiny room. Now that they have delivered my bed, the situation is worse. Monica wouldn't sleep on the bed last night but insisted that I sleep on the bed and she sleep on the floor with the kids. She said she was an African woman used to sleeping on the ground. I tried to make her sleep on the bed but she wasn't having any of it. I'm secretly pleased that I have the flat to myself tonight, even though that is selfish.

Hi Richard! I find your journal entries so informative & entertaining, and I wonder whether you "save" what you've written, so that it can be an on-going account of your life in South Africa? Maybe with a view to eventually turning it into a book for publication?? (Sorry about split infinitive btw).

Just a thort anyway. Whilst I'm here, could I ask for directions to the emoticons?? Thanks, ~~Misty~~

Misty,

Excuse me interrupting. Do you have H2G2 in the alabaster skin? If you do the emoticon menu will not be visible to you. In other skins it appears directly under the reply box and all that is requires is a click see. I don't know how to find it in alabaster though.
You can check what skin you are using by clicking "My Preferences" in the menu to the left. I'm using Brunel.

Hope you are well and managing to sit down now !

Dagesh,

Keep posting.

Polly

just to add if you're using alabaster "my preferences" appears in the menu at the top of the screen when you're in "my space" (not to the left - there's nothing to the left in alabaster!).

I prefer the look of alabaster but brunel gives you more options....

hebe