Radiac's South African Adventure, Part 5

African Adventure Parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13

After I left the internet, I wandered the grounds of the school for a while, before bumping into the lady we'd had dinner with the night before. She's organising a design technology conference, and I somehow got roped into helping to pack bags for the delegates. There were pens, but I didn't get one; instead I was given a Sprite and a cake. Guess I can't complain too much, although it took Paul 3 hours to finish what he was doing and come rescue me...

That evening, we returned to the school for a concert. It was soloists and groups, and it was all quite good. What suddenly dawned on me towards the end though was that of about 40 items, only one piece was native African - a piece played on the mbira, by the son of the mbira teacher, and amongst the pianists and wind players playing classical European music, it felt to me more like amusement for the audience - here's something native, isn't it quaint? I realised that I was sitting in a school that essentially the same as the schools I went to in England, and that it had lost virtually nothing in its journey to this suburb of Johannesburg. I was sitting in a predominantly white school in a predominantly black country, listening to music from home, in a building from home, in an establishment from home. I have felt it before on this trip, but I think that this was the first time that I actually figured out what it was that was wrong; that my country and others like it felt they had the right to come over here and stamp out the indigenous people, their culture, their entire way of life, and that in the hundreds of years since they arrived, they have been so insular that they haven't stepped outside their compounds to see what the country is really like, to such a degree that the European culture has survived virtually intact. So I sat through the rest of the concert a little disillusioned, and wondering whether the rest of the country was like this.

The next day suggested that it was.

Day Six - Wednesday 20th October

I had a bit of a lie in, and Paul returned from school at about 10 and took me over to Sandton City Shopping Mall.

For those who don't know, Sandton is apparently the rich bit of Johannesburg, and Sandton City accordingly the biggest shopping mall in the city. And I was here until Paul finished teaching at 4.30. While some people may think that 6 hours of shopping is even better than sliced bread, which is pretty damned neat, I was slightly concerned that I may get bored. So the first thing I did was go to a cinema and get rid of a couple of hours by watching 'The Bourne Supremacy', which was quite good.

Getting to the cinema, however, had been a bit of a shock. Here I was in Africa, walking past exact clones of 'Accessorize', 'Claires' and 'The Body Shop', past shops that were identical to Marks and Spencers, Waterstones, J&B Sport and Clinton Cards (often having the same colour scheme on their logo), spread out by big-name shops such as Gucci, with the occasional tiny shop full of tourist trash. After the film I spent several hours going through all of these and found them to be exactly how I had guessed they were on the way past.

Still, I was here with a task to perform - holiday gifts.

I hate buying presents. I really do. Accordingly it's the bit of going on holiday that I dread - people at home pretty much expect a present of some sort - fair enough, I would too if I was in their position - but I never know what to get, because the present must be related to the country, but it can't be tacky or useless because where's the point in that. The last full day of my holiday to America (6 years ago now? Eep) was basically spent going around shops looking for presents, and it rather spoiled the end of my holiday. I therefore decided that on this trip I would buy presents as close to the start of the holiday as possible, so I had the second half free to enjoy.

Unfortunately, it wasn't to be. Everything 'African' is incredibly cheap and tacky, and everything else is just like home. Who would like a Zulu-style wooden spoon? Or a stuffed toy lion perhaps? No? How about a crudely carved wooden giraffe? Or perhaps a tacky plastic bead necklace would be more to your taste? Seriously, it's either this rubbish or things from the non-tourist-trash shops, which are all identical to the ones back home - where's the point in buying someone a book or a cd or something, especially as it's cheaper back in the UK...

So, having bought myself a zulu-style wooden spoon and a crudely carved wooden giraffe, I gave up on the whole presents idea and went off to find somewhere to eat. Deciding I wanted something different to home made this task quite difficult - I walked past McDonalds, Wimpy, a Cafe Uno clone, somewhere that had a menu remarkably similar to Pizza Express, promptly gave up and went to somewhere called 'Global Wrapps'. I ordered the most exotic things on the menu - a Mexican chicken wrap, and a strawberry and banana milkshake. They were both very nice, and I am currently sitting with the empty wrappers in front of me, waiting for Paul to ring me and tell me he is outside waiting to collect me.

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