Yzerfontein, SA

When you're living on the road there's an enchanting game that you get to play that I call "hunt for the switch". Each new home that you're welcomed into has a totally different light switch arrangement. "And here's the bathroom that you can use", says your hospitable host. The first thing that usually comes to your mind isn't generally, "and where might i find the light switch?" The rules are ever changing and dynamic. Here in SA there's a new and fun twist thrown into the game. The standard switches in the country are much flatter and don't stick out as far from the wall (this making them more elusive to a preliminary hand sweep of a wall). Next, it is standard practice in SA to put a light switch outside of the room concerned. Occasionally far outside... And on a panel with multiple switches. The fun never ends!

Couldn't resist that small aside. SA continues to amaze and enthral. I've not started to bounce around the country. After getting my legs with Shawn and Karien, I've now gotten comfortable enough to take to the road and start really getting to know new people. In Strand I rented a car and began my education on driving in the rest of the world. Thankfully I was able to rent an automatic, because I would have been lost if I were on the wrong side of the car, on the wrong side of the road, and shifting with the wrong hand all at once. Amazingly the transition has been rather quick, and appart from a few brief terrifying moments, it's all gone by rather smoothly. My little white VW has taken me to places like Malmesbury, Langebaan, Paternoster, and Yzerfontein. It has taken me into the lives of people like Carel & Litisha and their family. Awie, Benita and their boys Ruan and Abrie. Ricardo and his little band of brothers. It's taken me to a lot of joy - and to some sorrow. To the best of West Cape Boer hospitality and to the reality of boys less than 10 living and sleeping on the streets.

There are many things that I'm always noticing as different here in south Africa. Some of the things are as small as the fact that South Africans usually grate rather than slice their cheese into a sandwich rather than slicing it. Some are a little bigger like the fact that drivers here pull onto the shoulder of the road and drive there when a faster moving vehicle wants to pass - and then the grateful passer signals his thanks with a quick rotation of his four-way flashers. And then some are as big as the fact that some of my new friends would never think of dating a girl of a different color. My guide books taught me a lot of about this country, but there's so much more that I can only learn by walking in the shoes of the South Africans. The shoes of these people whom I have sofar found to be warm, hospitable, and giving irrespective of race, and class. As an outsider I've gotten the best though - I get to experience so many of the joys, without having to live so many of the pains. It boggles my mind as I begin to understand the challenges that this young country is grappling with. There are so many hundreds of years of undoing that must be done before the doing can really begin in earnest. Yet, it's like the old story about the school - where they decided to build the new school on the foundation of the old one - but couldn't afford to have a lapse in classes. It would be great to just have a time out - call everyone together and sort things out. But you can't. Everything has to keep going, and changing at the speed of history.
My friends have introduced me to Johnny Clegg. Back in the days when such things weren't done, white Johnny began making music with the black Zulu people. In a unique hybrid he create music that can be equally embraced across SA by people of many colors. He sings about the beauty of Southern Africa, about the sky, about common experience. It is the perfect soundtrack for a drive through Western Coast farm country. It's the kind of music that can feed a sort of euphoria when it's combined with the perfect and inimatable visuals that inspired it. But then as quickly as you can be brought from 120km/hr to a dead stop by a road construction zone - a face and story can bring you down from the soaring of "African Sky Blue". On the beaches of Paternoster I met some of the most delightful boys of my life. Down where the colorful fishing dories where camped on the sugar sand beach they were playing, running, and jumping with a careless vitality. We fell into conversation and soon we were taking pictures together. Finally I had met some people who possibly enjoying taking more than I do myself. They wanted to pose for one more and one more. When I started taking individual pictures they insisted that each one must get as many shots as the last. "Take three of me! Take three of me!" Finally we parted - each thanking the other for the pictures. As I walked away tears of joy came for the beauty of the moment. But then, something else happened. Over on the other side of the small town I ran into one of the boys again. He began excitedly pointing me out as the one who had taken the pictures. He was walking with an older woman and she explained to me what was happening. His father had been killed some time ago and his mother had found a new boyfriend. She was now pregnant with a new child and as pregnant mothers often are she had a craving for a drink. Her boyfriend had gone out to the store for her and was later found dead. This is the realities of the life of the small boy who so joyfully played with me just a few hours earlier. He and his friends had crowded around me so happy - so trusting. As we reviewed the pictures together they all pilled over me - putting their hands on my shoulders, and arms. Leaning on me and so recklessly entering my space. Oh, the joy and beauty that I have seen - and then the sorrow as numbing as the icy atlantic water that drives against the beaches here in Yzerfontein.
God has brought me down the most interesting of roads. I don't question for a minute that he brought me here and established this road in his imagination. There is so much to learn here - to feel, and see, and live.

More picture here:Africa II