I’m from Germany, I’ve walked to school in 1st grade already. In South Africa there’s an American-Style car culture, and a lot of crime. So mostly the very poor walk. I’ve lived there for half a year in a rich area. I walked to the store, because it’s a nice walk (Uber back, because we lived on top of a mountain… some of the cars even struggled, only tried walking that direction once) every time I went shopping, I was the only white guy to walk that street. Some black employees (it was a rich area) of the mansions there were walking, but mostly it was just SUVs.
My wife’s niece’s school is maybe 1 km away from where they live. Car, both ways, every time. She’s 13.
Last time we visited, we went to a restaurant. It was dark (minor culture shock: It’s crazy how fast the sun disappears in comparison to Northern Germany. Bright-dark-black. No slow sunset) when we walked back (~500 meters). When we arrived, her uncle was just leaving and told us we really shouldn’t do that, it’s far too dangerous. About 350 meters of those were brightly lit …
Also, not so much culture shock directly, but a ton of things were new and strange to me, a white guy whose exposure to black people was pretty much just TV and cinema. Simply that hair works so different was completely new to me because I never thought about it.
In SA, there’s some added strangeness from surviving tribal rituals that sometimes get blended or live side-by-side with Christianity. Last time we were there (my wife is from the Sotho tribe), there was the ritual overnight slaughter and cooking of a lamb, which also involved making bread and brewing some kind of beer, and then eat, drink and either smoke or take snuff. Even the tiniest amount was okay, so even the children participated. This was to ask the ancestors to bless our lives and our trip back to Germany. Then, because a ton has (?, not quite clear, my wife is not very traditional :D) to be made, they had to find people to eat/drink all that stuff.
Haha, reminds me of the scene in the beginning of the film The Gods must be Crazy where you see someone getting in the car to drive down the driveway to pick up the mail.
I had a friend in school who went to South Africa for half a year and he was mugged several times. He always had like 20 Dollars of cash on him to get out of the situation. That was 15 years ago, no idea what it’s like now.
Crime is high, but I guess I’ve been lucky, overall I’ve now spent about 10 months there without ever being the victim of a crime (well, unless you count the fuckhead of our white racist landlady stifling us on our deposit)
South Africa: Hate of walking, danger of walking.
I’m from Germany, I’ve walked to school in 1st grade already. In South Africa there’s an American-Style car culture, and a lot of crime. So mostly the very poor walk. I’ve lived there for half a year in a rich area. I walked to the store, because it’s a nice walk (Uber back, because we lived on top of a mountain… some of the cars even struggled, only tried walking that direction once) every time I went shopping, I was the only white guy to walk that street. Some black employees (it was a rich area) of the mansions there were walking, but mostly it was just SUVs.
My wife’s niece’s school is maybe 1 km away from where they live. Car, both ways, every time. She’s 13.
Last time we visited, we went to a restaurant. It was dark (minor culture shock: It’s crazy how fast the sun disappears in comparison to Northern Germany. Bright-dark-black. No slow sunset) when we walked back (~500 meters). When we arrived, her uncle was just leaving and told us we really shouldn’t do that, it’s far too dangerous. About 350 meters of those were brightly lit …
Also, not so much culture shock directly, but a ton of things were new and strange to me, a white guy whose exposure to black people was pretty much just TV and cinema. Simply that hair works so different was completely new to me because I never thought about it.
In SA, there’s some added strangeness from surviving tribal rituals that sometimes get blended or live side-by-side with Christianity. Last time we were there (my wife is from the Sotho tribe), there was the ritual overnight slaughter and cooking of a lamb, which also involved making bread and brewing some kind of beer, and then eat, drink and either smoke or take snuff. Even the tiniest amount was okay, so even the children participated. This was to ask the ancestors to bless our lives and our trip back to Germany. Then, because a ton has (?, not quite clear, my wife is not very traditional :D) to be made, they had to find people to eat/drink all that stuff.
Haha, reminds me of the scene in the beginning of the film The Gods must be Crazy where you see someone getting in the car to drive down the driveway to pick up the mail.
I had a friend in school who went to South Africa for half a year and he was mugged several times. He always had like 20 Dollars of cash on him to get out of the situation. That was 15 years ago, no idea what it’s like now.
Crime is high, but I guess I’ve been lucky, overall I’ve now spent about 10 months there without ever being the victim of a crime (well, unless you count the fuckhead of our white racist landlady stifling us on our deposit)