I'm sorry that I haven't written in a while. I've been travelling and out of
email contact. 

I first flew to Jo-burg then drove all the way back on the wrong side of the
road. Thankfully the other motorists on the road were adept at interpreting my
windshield wiper on's and off's as turn signals. 

Jo-Burg is a typical inland financial center sort of town. Big roads, large
houses, and traffic that might reluctantly yield to pedestrians.  It's normal
enough except for the exceptionally high crime rate (I personally have met two
groups of travelers who were confronted by armed men) and the consequent walls.
Every house is surrounded by walls ten feet high topped with electrified barbed
wire.  A black native told me sarcastically that the reason for the barbed wire
was that Jo-Burg was a city fascinated with birds and so being provided as many
roosting spots as possible.

While in Jo-Burg I took a tour of Soweto. SOuthWEsternTOwnship is not an
African name or place. It's an area of Johannesburg that was licensed for black
occupation. I felt a little bad about doing so, like taking a tour through
Cabrini Green or touring a farm where migrant workers are toiling. There's
something about "touring" a neighborhood that's uncomfortably close to going to
the zoo. I did it anyway because all the guidebooks explicitly said not to go
there -- and I really wanted to see what life was like under the shelter of an
shanty-town. 

Most of the tour was uneventful and even a little boring.  Desmond Tutu and
Nelson Mandela both grew up in Soweto and give it the distinction of being the
only place in the world where two Nobel prize winners grew up on the same
street.  It felt safer that Johannesburg, there was nothing there to steal and
everyone together had a vested interest in survival.  I'll skip the physical
description because it's so similar to what you can imagine or may have seen
across the river from El Paso, Texas or down the road from San Diego except to
say that 4-5 thousand people were living in less space than 1/4 of a small city
block.  Anything went architecturally -- if it was solid and waterproof it was
used.

I got a little annoyed at one point because the tour was going to only "safe"
places -- Nelson's old house, the same Shabin (local bar where they serve a
repulsive drink made from corn meal -- try warm chunky beer the color of
Elmer's glue), etc, etc.  I wanted to get down and dirty and at least have
lunch in a local place.

In front of me three men hacked away at cow's skulls with axes (to get the
brains out) while I ate my lunch. Seven or eight men sat with me while a group
of attendant women watched from a wooden bench on the side. I paid for lunch,
20R in all ($3US) and fed all of us. To start the meal I was taken to a wooden
table to the left of the chopping stands from which I selected cuts of heart,
liver, and meat from piles of much less clear and much more dubious origins.
The table was a bloody disaster, covered with flies, blood, and piles of
organs.  The juice from the table flowed down onto the baked clay dirt and
mixed with water flowing past the table and out onto the road. The meat I
selected was trimmed from a pile of all the flesh from one of the skulls behind
me. The mound I chose had an eyeball jutting out which was squeezed
uncomfortably on the table surface. The cutter took my requests and returned to
the table with nicely sliced chunks of meat on a traditional wooden serving!
bowl.  I admit that I was a little afraid that I'd be eating the meat without
it being cooked first, but a young man came out and placed the it on a grill I
hadn't previously noticed between the table and the choppers.  After being
cooked the meat was returned to the table, garnished with salt, and the group
of us ate it and baba (maize meal, same as used to make the beer) with our
hands.

I survived the meal without incident and will remember it forever.  It was
particularly fascinating (and saddening) that every person at the table asked
for my address in the United States and asked if I could employ them.  I wonder
why American companies haven't started exploiting this huge cheap labor pool --
they all speak English already!

The drive back to Cape Town was pretty disappointing, it put my in a bit of a
sour mood and causes me to reflect.

I am amazed at the destructive nature of colonization. Besides one stretch of
mountainous jungle presumably too daunting to hack into submission, the
entirety of South Africa is a montage of the central plains of California, a
hefty chunk of western Texas, and a bit of miniaturized Utah thrown in for
spice. Although I would expect similar land forms and geological tendencies due
to the overarching dynamics of plate tectonics, temperate climate, and wind
erosion I had no way of anticipating the fences. Every bit of land has been
fenced, all inididigenous animals and peoples corralled into pens (either
literal or economic), and all hills clear cut to make way for sheep, cows, and
goats. I expected, perhaps naively, to see a relatively pristine land, full of
elephants, baboons, and dassies but instead I found the rolling hills of Texas
complete with horse riding cowboys, cows, and so many miles of fences I wanted
to cry. It reminded me that the human population requires so muc!  h land to
support itself that we all should be scared of future consequences. 

I hadn't ever really given any thought to the Christian idea of ownership of
earth and animals. As you know I was raised a Christian and was told among
other things that man has dominion over earth and animals. That they are all
below us and can be exploited to our ends. It is not surprising then that the
people who colonized the world, the Europeans, predominantly the English,
didn't restrain themselves when it came to brutalizing the landscape and
killing life. Why should they have? They had the right to do so, given to them
from God himself. Don't like the mountain lion? Kill it. Don't like the jungle
because it doesn't have the same caloric crop output as equivalent acres of
corn or grazed cattle? Cut it down. Massive stretches of the coast of South
Africa have been reduced from jungle into sickening man-made forests of pine
trees. I'm not a plant person but I suspect the damage to the jungle is much
greater than can be solved by cutting down the pine trees as the trees ha!  ve
been there for years and their needles have accumulated on the ground below.  I
read somewhere that the reason for this was to make the European settlers feel
more like they were at home where pine forests dominate.  Neither baboons nor
any other indigenous South African life can survive in a pine forest.

Cape Town is beautiful.  South Africa is accessible and cheap.  It's not
Africa.  If you come, come here for the beaches, sun, and ridiculously cheap
food not an African adventure.

I'm off tomorrow morning on a 50 day overland trip from South Africa to
Nairobi, Kenya.  I hope then to see a little of the Africa which drew me here
in the first place.