Martin Gordon's Blog

I'm leaving South Africa today after a week-long business trip to Johannesburg and I've finally had some time to collect my thoughts. In no particular order:

• Security is a big deal here. All residences from middle class up are surrounded by 8 foot fences upon which are electric fences. Signs announcing "armed response" are all over the place. Radio advertisements for homes note electric fences as attributes of a home as matter-of-factly as the number of bedrooms and bathrooms.
• I posted about Vusi Mahlasela recently but I didn't appreciate his lyrics (the ones in English anyway) until visiting Soweto (the South Western Township where blacks were forced to live during apartheid) and reading about the anti-apartheid struggle.
• Soweto was not quite the ghetto I pictured. I did see the tiny 100 sq ft homes and tin shacks (comparable to Brazilian favelas) I was expecting, but I also saw larger homes with BMWs and Mercedes parked in front of them. There is much more social stratification in this so-called slum than the names used to describe it suggest.
• The weight of an empty Coke can is so deeply ingrained that I keep thinking there's soda left in the heavier SA cans when there's not.
• Before my plane left the US, flight attendants sprayed the plane. I still haven't found the reason behind this.
• The 16 hour flight here wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Whether my fatigue was due to jet lag or waking up at 6:30 every day is debatable. Regardless, the 7 hour time difference makes any sort of discussion with people back in the US extremely difficult. SA is almost a full business day ahead of New York and since things start winding down at 4:30 here, it makes any overlap in work hours miniscule if not nonexistent.
• My iPhone gets no service here. When I took my Treo to Spain last winter, I was able to roam there with no problem. A possible explanation might be that international roaming was disabled when I switched to the iPhone but something more nefarious might be at work.

Technorati Tags: South Africa, business trip, travel, thoughts, Joburg, Johannesburg