The Last Post: This Is Africa

The other night we were out in Cape Town looking for somewhere we could have dinner and watch the Spain vs Chile World Cup match. We had out eye on a place that served Cape Malay cuisine, which is a South African version of Indian food. The waitress (or waitron as they say here) greeted us with a big smile and told us, yes, no problem, we could go and sit in the pub next door with the big screen and she would come and serve us there. But then when we went to buy a beer at the pub, the barman (bar-on? no) told us we weren’t allowed to eat outside food there because they had their own kitchen. So we had to take our beers back to the restaurant and sit in a corner so we could just see the tv in the pub. Halfway through our meal, the manager of the pub comes up and says sorry, we can’t take their beers outside the pub area – the police were there and he didn’t want to get in trouble. The upshot was that we had our food on one table, our beers on the table next to it, and when we wanted a drink we’d have to get up, walk two steps, take a drink, then walk back and sit down with our food.



(look closely - the beer's on the right and the food on the left)





As for the cops, they couldn’t have cared less – they were only there to take advantage of the big screen!

I’m told the expression ‘This Is Africa’, or ‘T.I.A.’ for short, comes from the movie Blood Diamond. I’ll have to check it out. It’s become a common refrain and sanity-preserving mechanism these last few weeks as we’ve wound our way along the World Cup trail. I only learned it when I got to South Africa – but boy it would have come in handy in Kenya a few times. Like the time I went to the chemist to buy headache pills. There are no display shelves in Kenyan chemists, just a counter where you tell them what you need and (theoretically) they go out back and get it for you. The lady grabbed brought a box out for me and said “these ones are 12 shillings”. Less than five cents – that’s cheap, I thought. “Ok I’ll take them”, and I hand over 12 shillings. She stares at me. “I thought you wanted the whole box?” She was giving me the price per tablet. 120 for a box of ten. I walked out with my whole box of pain killers, both of us shaking our heads at the other’s strange ways.

Sitting at Joburg airport once more, waiting to board my flight home, I find I can’t really summarise my experience here in any meaningful way – so I want these little stories to stand in place of that. I’m hopeful a few seeds have been planted that will bear fruit down the track, but I’ll only know that when it happens. Besides, I think you can spend too much time looking for something profound and missing the little things that are right in front of you. So I’ll just say this is Africa – the good and the bad, the joyous and the miserable, the infuriating and the inspiring.

T.I.A. baby, T.I.A.