Some people just don’t get it, do they?

We had a tenant for two years who was regularly late with her rent. Sometimes that rent would be six weeks or more in arrears and when it came time to renew her lease a few months back, we were relieved that she declared she was unwilling to do so.

We tried explaining to her that we had a mortgage payment to make on the building in which she lived, and if she didn’t pay her rent on time, we either dug into our own pockets to make up the shortfall or we incurred late penalties from our lender. Did putting late penalties onto her rent make a difference? No, she just ignored them.

Well, now she’s out. The first thing we had to do was have the place cleaned. She claims to have had a cleaning service in, but if that’s true, then she needs to get her money back. The oven took more than an hour (with a spray-on oven cleaner and lots of elbow-grease) to scrub clean, and more than two hours were spent, on hands and knees, getting the stains out of the carpet. And then there were the missing items to be replaced, like the gate latch and the shower drain, and the damaged items to be repaired or replaced, like kitchen door hinges and a mouldy, mildew-stained shower curtain (a fabric curtain that could have been kept clean by the simple expedient of a quick cycle through the washing machine with a bit of bleach).

Finally, there is a mountain of garden debris (hers was a garden flat) behind the garden shed, debris she was warned in writing to remove and to cease and desist from piling there. Always it was, “we’ll get it out next weekend…” Well, next weekend has come and gone and now I have to hire someone to come haul it away and dump it. And it won’t be at my expense, although it will be the lowest cost vendor I can find.

So, she’s been out of her flat for less than two weeks and guess what? She’s calling up and having fits because she hasn’t received her cleaning/security deposit back yet. Seems she needs the money…

Shoe pinches when it’s on the other foot, doesn’t it?

In South Africa, size doesn't matter...

I stand corrected…

A lovely gentleman from KwaZulu Natal has dropped me a note informing me that I haven’t correctly grasped the difference between pies and tarts here in the beautiful Republic of South Africa. After rolling his comment around in my mind, I have had to come to the conclusion that he is absolutely correct.

In America, the difference between a pie and a tart is size (with the exception of pot pies). Drop by the pots n pans section of any American supermarket and you’ll find pie pans, which have sloping sides and a diameter of either 8 or 9 inches. If the market is well-stocked, you will also find tart, mini-tart, and tartlet pans, which are pie pans of decreasing diameter (sometimes with fluted sides, sometimes not). So, in America, if it’s big, it’s a pie, if it’s small it’s a tart…except in the case of savoury (not sweet) pies, which are all pies regardless of size.

In South Africa, the difference is much simpler: if it has a top, it’s a pie…if it doesn’t have a top, it’s a tart…size doesn’t matter. That means those delicious Thanksgiving pumpkin pies are really tarts, as are custard pies of all flavours…chocolate cream pie is really a tart…I wonder how a cobbler would be classified?

It does simplify things, I suppose, although a bit of confusion arises when the tart is actually tart-sized. An American would recognize a jam tart, for example (although he might wonder why anyone would go to so much effort with crust and oven when jam can so easily be consumed on a quickly made piece of toast), but an apple tart…called a Dutch apple pie in the States…might cause him to wonder if the tarts are so big, where are the giant pies? When I was 14 I took second place in a pie baking contest with a Dutch apple pie, but now I know that what I entered was actually a tart. I wonder if the judges would have disqualified me if they had known the difference?

Nomenclature aside, there is one other difference between South African tarts and American pies: the crust. Here, savoury pies are made with a crumbly, flaky crust, rather like a phyllo dough, and the sweet pies (tarts) are made with a hard, tough bottom crust that needs a jack hammer to get through. In America, we use the same pastry dough recipe for top and bottom crusts, sweet and savoury alike. I learned to bake from my grandmother who made the lightest, flakiest, most delicate pie crusts ever to melt on one’s tongue. I find that I…and my South African husband…find the pie…er…tart fillings here to be lovely, but we both leave those impenetrable bottom crusts behind.

So there you have it…I stand corrected…in South Africa, size is immaterial in the difference between pie and tart, it’s the top crust that gives the confection its name!

Christmas on the Other Side

Americans don’t seem to know a lot about South Africa. In fact, some Americans can’t tell the difference between Africa (a continent) and South Africa (a country on the continent along with Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Nigeria, and a whole lot of other places you’ve probably never heard of, either). I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised since it is widely rumoured that I share breathing space and citizenship with people who can’t tell the difference between Mexico (a foreign country) and New Mexico (an American state).

Anyway, a certain amount of ignorance about South Africa is to be expected, I suppose. The apartheid years saw news blackouts in both directions, and American schools don’t go into much depth regarding the less developed world. So, if you are labouring under the misconception that South Africa still has apartheid, or that lions and tigers roam the streets, or that South Africa is a dangerous, undeveloped poverty pocket where half-naked, skin-draped natives make war on each other and the witch doctors hold sway, you aren’t entirely alone.

I knew about Johannesburg and Cape Town being large, cosmopolitan cities, but in my circle of acquaintances, I seemed to be in the minority…a rather scary observation when you realize that the vast majority of the people I associate with are highly intelligent, reasonably well-educated individuals. Some of the questions I fielded when I announced my intention to move to Cape Town: “Is the water safe?” “Are there paved roads?” “Are the animals still loose or have they been put in parks like Yosemite?” (Yes, yes, and www.krugerpark.co.za/)

Now that I’m here, I still get some odd questions from friends and acquaintances back in the States. Like, do we celebrate Thanksgiving here? No, actually, we don’t. Thanksgiving is an American holiday, ostensibly commemorating that first feast between the Pilgrims and Indians. There weren’t any Pilgrims in South Africa, and the Indians here are from India.

South Africa is a largely Christian nation, the missionaries of old having done their jobs well, bless their little black hearts. There is also a large Muslim community here, and Durban has more Hindu temples than you can shake a stick at. Many of the black people still worship ancestors or adhere to animist beliefs, sometimes simultaneously with being church-going Christians. And yet despite all of this religious diversity, Christmas is almost universally celebrated here.

But an American might have a bit of difficulty recognizing the Christmas spirit in South Africa. The Dutch are a frugal people and their Afrikaner acorns have not fallen far from the Dutch tree. One of my first impressions of the white community here was how tight they are: little ad papers proliferate here and people advertise…and actually expect to sell…their old toilets, window frames, kitchen curtains, and closet gleanings…and for extraordinary prices, too! The concept of donating to charitable organizations like Goodwill or Salvation Army or St. Vincent DePaul is not very well established here. It is no surprise, then, that the American tradition of buying a boatload of gifts for the family, particularly the immediate family, has little traction in South Africa.

We don’t have live Christmas trees, either. South Africa is a semi-arid climate and arable land (and the water to irrigate it) is at a premium…and used for food production. There are few natural forests here, and the planted forests are primarily eucalyptus and the property of paper companies. In fact, wood is scarce here compared to the US and costly. Houses are built of clay or cement bricks, rather than stick-built like in America. Trees, particularly those trees that can grow tall and become timber, are not sacrificed for a couple of weeks of display.

Of course, we can’t discount the frugal nature of the South African: not having the emotional attachment to the tradition of a fragrant, gew-gaw encrusted pine in the middle of the living room as Americans have, South Africans find the reusable fake tree to be the optimal choice. Our table-top fibre optic tree has served us for four years and will be pressed into service again this year…rather a bit of an irony, considering that my father has a Christmas tree farm in Oregon!

Despite the fact that South Africans tend not to give each other…or their children…teetering mountains of Christmas swag, the malls are presently jammed with throngs of harried shoppers who brought their credit cards and shopping lists but left their manners at home. A large number of these people are vacationers, Cape Town being one of the favourite summer holiday destinations in this country, and while they jam the malls and parking lots, their teeming numbers don’t necessarily translate into piles of presents under those fake trees. Johannesburg is South Africa’s answer to LA when it comes to traffic, and the vacationing Joburgers don’t leave their combative traffic habits at home when they take their holidays in Cape Town…which they snarkily call “SlaapStad” (“SleepTown”)…which turns navigating our laidback roadscape into a knuckle biting experience. It isn’t much different in the parking lots, malls, or shops, either. So the holiday experience here, at least where shopping and driving is concerned, isn’t too different from my experiences in Silicon Valley.

My first Christmas here, five members of Hubby’s family…including my newly-minted mother-in-law…came to visit and I prepared a traditional American Christmas dinner. Well, that was the plan, anyway. I had my first taste of culture shock when I went shopping for the 22 pound turkey that was my customary centrepiece of the meal…no turkey! Seems that South Africans are only just developing a taste for turkey meat, preferring chicken or ham for their Christmas dinners. Eventually I found a turkey…a puny 11 pounder…and found myself with another surprise: the pinfeathers had neither been plucked out nor singed. Spoiled American that I am, I grumbled as I sat at the breakfast bar with pliers and stick matches, plucking and singeing and getting the turkey ready.

Shock number two came when I tried to put the turkey in the oven…the roaster was bigger than the oven! So, I lined a flat cake pan with foil and plopped the gobbler in side, folded up the sides to make a tent, and took it to the oven.

Surprise, surprise! The turkey…a puny little 11 pound turkey, barely larger than a fat chicken…wouldn’t fit into the oven. It was too tall! Right…the top edge of the turkey breast was literally touching the top of the oven! I managed to get the thing flattened down a bit and then get the beast roasted, but thank goodness I couldn’t find the 22 pounder I had originally been after!

Nobody knew what candied yams were, although mince pie (which is called a “tart” here) was recognized and eagerly wolfed down. Then, as a nod to South African Christmas traditions, we had a Christmas pudding (which is more of a fruit cake than anything else) with something called “custard” poured over it. Now, when you say “custard” to an American, we get a mental image of a firm-textured yellow milk-and-egg thing that, when cut, holds its shape. Not so South African custard…here, the word custard is used to describe a kind of custard-coloured, vanilla-flavoured thick sweet sauce with the consistency of pudding that failed to set. You can pour it…in fact, you do pour it. Now, I’m not particularly a fan of either fruitcake or custard, so the appeal of the dish is lost on me, but Hubby’s family was enthusiastic in their demolition of it.

The English custom of pulling Christmas crackers, completely unknown in America, continues to be indulged here. Wikipedia explains Christmas crackers so much better than I can: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_cracker . Despite my husband and his family being Hindu, we exchange Christmas gifts and everyone seems to be enthralled with those Christmas crackers.

I’m an American. I don’t get it.

Sorry to have neglected you...

Sorry to have been gone for so long, but sometimes life takes precedence over blogging…blasphemous sentiment, I know, but there you have it.

We are desperately trying to get our cottage rented. You see, we have a mortgage on the rental property and if two of the three units aren’t rented, those mortgage payments come out of our personal pockets, which are a bit on the flat side since we took our fabulous holiday to Durbs. The big two bedroom flat is coming vacant on March 1 so it’s important to get the flat rented so we have enough income to make the mortgage.

Two of the three flats went vacant on December 1, so we’ve been scrambling since we got back from Durban to get them advertised and shown to prospective tenants. We did manage to get the 2 bedroom flat rented and the tenants moved in Saturday, but the cottage still needed cleaning and showing and hard work makes me too tired to think, let alone blog, hence my prolonged absence.

Anyway, I just got back from showing the cottage…we’ve decided to rely on rental agents to a large degree this time because we’ve just not had good luck finding honest, reliable tenants on our own. Last year at this time we were scrambling to repair the damages and replace the furnishings as a result of inadvertently renting to a crackhead. What furnishings he did not sell (including the bed, the refrigerator and even the pots & pans!) he destroyed. We had to repair plumbing, carpets, walls, and even replace the custom-made blinds he destroyed. His six-week tenancy…at R2500 per month…cost us R20,000+ in damages. Had we the facilities to run a credit check we might have picked up on the dodgy nature of this guy, but we couldn’t and we didn’t and we paid for it…literally.

Another reason we are using rental agents is that I am sick and tired of wasting time and gas driving over to show the cottage to people who just can’t be bothered to keep their appointments. It’s only 2km to the place, but that’s 4km round trip and as much as I love my Bertha, I have no illusions about her…she is a gas hog. More important, however, is that I invest time…I drive over, unlock the place, open the blinds and windows and turn on the fan and then sit and wait…and wait…and wait…for people who don’t even have the manners to call and cancel their appointment. The agent, who stands to make a fat commission on renting out my cottage, doesn’t want to piss me off by being a no show…it’s a very competitive business and if she stiffs me, I’ll never list with her again.

Because I live so close to the rental property, it is tempting to tell these prospects to go to the cottage and call me when they get there, but my cell phone service seems to have gone to H-E-double toothpicks the last few weeks. It’s never been good and we’ve called the provider out before, but this time it just sucks. I get “missed call” messages when I’ve physically had the phone on my person and it didn’t ring. It’s not the phone…I’ve had three phones since I moved into this house and it was a problem with all of them. My friend Sally cannot use her phone at my house (same provider) and Hubby has the same problem with his. Yesterday I got a voicemail from the provider…he called and the phone never rang at my end, so he had to leave a message. The SMS notifying me of his call came several hours later when I was away from home…in a place where I have signal.

So, they send a technician out and he agrees (like the last technician) that I have crappy signal here. He wants to put a signal booster on my roof (Hubby’s solution when he tried to resolve this two years ago). Problem is, we don’t spend enough money on their crappy service! Seems our R400 per month usage is about one third of what the cell phone provider requires in order to put in this booster. Hello? So it is OK for me to spend almost R5000 per year on a service that is unavailable to me half the time and substandard the other half? What part of this equation am I not getting???

The local telephone (landline) company is called Telkom…but subscribers universally refer to it as Hellkom. And with good reason. This is the epitome of a company that exists for the benefit of their shareholders and to hell with its customers. There are never enough employees for anything you wish to accomplish with them, whether it is a simple inquiry into your bill, reporting a fault, or ordering new service. You can expect to be in a queue of no less than thirty minutes and then be served by someone who is a) clueless, b) apathetic, c) unable to think…and sometimes all three. Oh…and don’t forget rude…if you don’t accept their bulldust line “Oh, your line is fine…I know your ADSL is dead, but my computer says your line is fine!” then they get mad at you and get rude. My friend Sally moved recently and it took three weeks for her telephone line to be installed…and even longer for her internet connection. Hiring more people (there is more than 20% unemployment in this country…there are lots of people willing and able to work if someone would just give them a job!) could only improve the situation: more installers means lines installed more quickly, more customer service reps and shorter queues and both add up to greater customer satisfaction. But who in Hellkom cares when they are a monopoly and their enraged customer base doesn’t have anywhere to go? As long as the shareholders are happy with their ever-increasing dividends, who cares if the phone service is crap and the phone company is universally reviled?

If you are tempted to say “Well, it’s Africa, what do you expect?” well…don’t! The problem is not our location, it is that pernicious mindset that has crept into the country from the First World: screw the customers and f*ck the employees, just maximize profit. Telkom posts obscene profits every year without bothering to upgrade its infrastructure, improve its service, or increase its headcount. In fact, a couple of years ago, it made deep cuts in the headcount, improving profits at the expense of service. A little piece of American culture that I do not miss at all.

On a lighter note, we have had a little excitement on the block this week. Ferrets are not native to any part of Africa, so Thandiswe can be forgiven for her wide-eyed panic at seeing a ferret drinking out of one of the basins beneath the courtyard fountains the other day. She was convinced it was the biggest rat on the continent!

I found some pics on the internet of ferrets and showed them to her and she identified the animal she saw as a ferret. Once I explained to her that it probably was feeding on the mice and moles that plague us, she was a bit relieved…”It’s not dangerous?” she asked me. I am sure she was thinking of the two-month-old baby boy she brings to work, tied to her back, every day.

How did I know it was a ferret? Well, it’s been hanging around our block for a couple of months now. I suspect a neighbour had it as a pet and it escaped. Sally, who lives a block away, has seen it in her garden and I’ve seen it in the street at least twice, as my neighbour across the street. Since I’m not farming chickens and the vacant lot up the road is farming moles, I’m happy for the little varmint to stay.

Speaking of varmints…I’m deathly allergic to bees and in South Africa, nobody has window or door screens. Go figure…the mosquito capital of the planet and there are no screens! So, a bee got into the house yesterday and Hubby is on a business trip so he can’t come rescue me…what to do? Well, as luck would have it, the nasty little creature buzzed his way into the retreat, where the air conditioning doesn’t reach because I have the heavy curtains pulled. It doesn’t seem to be here today so either it found a way out or the heat baked it dead…I am hoping for the latter.

But, this morning one of my neighbours, whose back garden wall touches part of my garden wall, came by to tell me that there is a huge swarm of bees in one of the trees at the back of our property! I sent Thandiswe out to see if she could spot it (not something I am willing to risk with my allergy) and she came back saying the garden shed was full of hundreds of bees! Lord, what do I do now? Hubby is out of town and I don’t dare go out there and try to do something about it myself. Thank goodness he had the excellent foresight to install air conditioning in the bedroom last summer so I don’t have to open the windows!

Well, duty calls…must go show the cottage again…hopefully this one will show up!

How beautiful is Cape Town?

I don't think people outside of the immediate area have any idea how beautiful Cape Town is. Like South Africa, Cape Town is a wonderfully diverse place and the architecture here is absolutely amazing. I am presently on a mission to record examples of the beauty and diversity of what has become my new home.

To the right is a shot of Lion's Head (a peak to the side of Table Mountain) taken from a major intersection in the CBD (Central Business District).

This gorgeous old Cape Dutch building on Strand Street is the gold museum.

A view of Signal Hill from the corner of Strand Str. and Buitengracht. Every day at noon, a cannon is loudly discharged from the top of the hill. It is rather a surprise, the first time you hear the "noon gun," especially if you are seated in a lovely outdoor restaurant and have a forkfull of food halfway to your mouth...

More pics to follow

Some pictures of Durban

Some pics taken in Durban...

...into the fire

11 November 2007

So, we decided to avoid Harrismith on our return journey. We sat down with a map and Hubby, Mr. Precise Engineer, mapped us out a route that would take us around Lesotho on its west side, meeting up with the N1 in Colesberg. We know the road and the scenery and the landmarks from Durban to Colesberg (via Harrismith) already, we reasoned, so why not kill two birds with one stone…see some new countryside and avoid that nightmare of road destruction in Harrismith?

I have to admit I was a bit reluctant. I’m not ordinarily inclined favourably towards long stretches of road that don’t have regular rest stops or petrol stations with ultra-clean bathrooms. Like most women, if I am to drop my drawers and expose my delicate bits to strange porcelain, I have a very strong preference for that porcelain…and its surroundings…to be immaculately clean. But Hubby was keen on taking a new route and after seeing the myriad of little towns…most of them no more than 50 to 75 km apart…I agreed to his plan.

So, we had our breakfast and hit the road. After filling Bertha and making sure our padkos and cool drink keepers were full up, we got out onto the N2 headed towards Port Shepstone. At Sheppy, we turned north towards Kokstad, a town I have never seen and Hubby hasn’t been to in 25 years. The adventure was on.

I must say, it was a learning experience.

The first thing I learned is that making the assumption that all those little towns would have petrol stations was a grievous error. The second thing I learned is that it was also a mistake to assume that a major brand petrol station…like Shell or CalTex…would have clean restrooms. My third lesson was that pay toilets actually exist in South Africa…I have never seen one before in this country and today I saw three! And finally, I learned that, as bad as the road conditions at Harrismith were (and they were really, really bad), those conditions were not as bad as they could have been.

I quickly discovered that on a road trip, I get very thirsty. Probably the drying effects of the air conditioning in the car (it also gives my hair static electricity, to Hubby’s never-ending amusement and my everlasting annoyance). So, we keep a cooler box of iced drinks in the back seat where I can easily reach it. We pack it full of Sprite Zero and Coke Lite and guzzle our way across country.

En route to Durbs we stopped at Ultra Cities and Star Stops and whatever Engen calls their mega petrol stations whenever Bertha started looking thirsty, when it was meal time (diabetics have to eat regular meals, even on the road), or when one of us needed to find a loo. On the N1, N5, and N3, that was just not difficult. On the R56 and R58, it was virtually impossible!

Because we were unsure of petrol availability along the way, we stopped for fuel when the gauge hit the halfway mark or lower (depending on where we could find a station). At Kokstad we filled up the car and emptied both of us out and got on the road to parts unknown…at least to us…confident that we would encounter multiple petrol stations along the way…doesn’t every rural town have at least a one pumper? Those farmers have to fuel up their cars and trucks, too, after all. Every thing was fine until all that Coke Lite I drank decided it needed an exit. Unlike Hubby, who can pull off to the side of the road and make an acquaintance with a local bush or tree, I require technology for such an event, so I said “Pull in at the next station you see, I need a loo.” He nodded while I consulted the map…maybe 20 km to the next town, so not to worry.

Yeah, right. The next town consisted of several hillsides full of rondawels, a bottle store and a tavern. As did the next…and the next…and the next! A hundred kilometres down the road and there’s no petrol, no loo…and no bush big enough to hide my glowing white moons! We did wend our way through one scabrous town…Mt. Fletcher, I think…but the Engen station (the only one in town) was so filthy and dilapidated I was unwilling to risk it. Dirty is one thing…dirty toilets are something else again.

But I’m experienced and I’m stoic. I know if I adjust my posture just right I’ll put a minimum of pressure on my bladder and I can wait it out. “Just take it easy on the bumps,” I told Hubby. “There’s got to be a place ahead with a relatively clean loo.” And Hubby, bless his empathetic little heart, tried to avoid the potholes and go gently over the unintended speed bumps, and on the map I saw another town just a few kilometres away. Hope was born anew.

We came around a bend in the road and saw a flagman waving us off to the left, off the road. Ahead, on the right, stretched a beautiful ribbon of newly tarred highway, inaccessible. Instead, we bumped off onto an unpaved track reminiscent of Harrismith…and it went on forever! The next time some smart-mouth bunny hugger superciliously finds fault with my choice of an SUV for my personal vehicle, I’m going to whip out the pictures of this abomination that passes for a road and ask if she would like to drive a Prius or some other trendy little pseudo-car over it. It damn near killed Bertha, an SUV built on an honest-to-god truck chassis by none other than Mercedes Benz. I’m sorry, but if my ML, sturdy road warrior that she is, can be brought to a shuddering, beeping, squealing halt by this piece of road, exactly what kind of namby-pamby town car would do better?

The ruts and bumps and rocks and holes were so bad that at times we were literally airborne. On one of those leaps, when we came down, Hubby’s left foot (which had also been airborne) came down on the parking brake pedal. This car is engineered such that, when you try to set the parking brake while your foot is on the accelerator and the car is moving forward, it will emits a series of shrieking beeps and, if the offence is sufficiently egregious, it will simply shut itself off. Which is exactly what happened. Except that we didn’t know what happened at the time. All we knew was that the car was dead, we were somewhere in the middle of the Transkei on a road that would have done a 4x4 challenge proud, and I had to pee so bad my eyes were turning yellow. I started scanning for a likely bush, but there was nothing but rocks…too big to drive over easily, but far too small to conceal anything like my overly-generous backside.

Hubby quickly figured out what was causing the lack of forward motion, restarted the car, and put us back on the trail. Fortunately, we were nearly back on the tarred road…I am sure my bladder would not have taken much more abuse, and within a few minutes we were in a small town that actually had two petrol stations! We pulled in to the first station, only to be told they didn’t have a loo, but the gents at the CalTex cheerfully pointed us around the corner.

They neglected to tell us it was a pay toilet…and why was only the women’s toilet fitted with a coin operated lock?? It took Hubby a full two minutes to get the stupid thing to accept the damn R1 coin (I couldn’t figure it out…I’ve never seen a coin op box like it in my life!) and let me in.

OK…it was clean. But there were three stalls, two of which lacked paper, and the third lacked a functioning lock. By this time, I did not care. I grabbed a wad of tissue and took it with me to a stall I could lock and found heavenly relief.

After stopping to get lunch at the hot food counter at the local Spar (not a restaurant, fast food joint or takeaway in town), we hit the road again, headed inexorably towards Colesberg where I sit typing this.

Looking back on today’s experience, I have come to the conclusion that, between Port Shepstone and Colesburg there are a total of three clean public restrooms: one in Kokstad, one in Maclear, and another in Lady Grey. That’s it. So, unless you have an iron bladder, I strongly suggest that if you are driving from Durban to Bloemfontein or points west, brave the construction debacle at Harrismith…the alternate route not only had worse roads, it had no toilets!