It's time-out time!

Whether all that whinging had an impact on the cosmos I am not sure but as of tomorrow I am having time-out for ten days. We are off to Johannesburg and then on to Cape Town.

It has been a busy week with quite a few people in town from the company and dinner out Thursday and Friday night and then five of us for dinner here on Saturday. All seemed to go reasonably well until it came time to cook the Steak Diane and the generator kept collapsing on us. Luckily we could re-start it the six or eight times required to get dinner cooked but it was a challenge all the same.

We are now thinking, having had advice from a colleague who knows much more than we do, that there is a problem with the wiring between the cooker and the genset, or 'jenny' as they tend to call them. That makes sense. Better that than having a problem with the generator. Anyway, it will be nice to have a break from recalcitrant cookers, generators, internet and the like.

Joburg will be pretty much Sandton City which isn't the real South Africa but I will be able to get a massage, see a movie, buy some books and maybe even find a podiatrist. Wearing slip-on sandals all the time does not make for soft feet. I also need a haircut and while I have been threatening to 'go local' I have not gotten around to it.

Sandton is one of our old 'homes' given the number of times we have transited through Joburg while living in Angola, then in Cape Town, later in Zambia and now in Malawi. We also had a stint in Johannesburg itself but thankfully, only for six months.

The number of times I have walked around Sandton in a daze, trying to adjust to the nearly nine hours time difference from Oz must be in the hundreds. Luckily I know my way around the place pretty much blindfolded which is what jetlag can feel like at the worst of times. I will say, while practice may not make perfect, it does make for progress and we really don't suffer too much from jetlag these days.

My favourite haunts in Sandton are the bookshops and the South Africans also seem to be into the esoteric and the spiritual so I rarely come away empty handed. There are also some really nice restaurants, particularly on Nelson Mandela Square, which, while something of a 'fortress' is a pleasant place to sit outside and have dinner.

No malaria in Joburg so sitting outside at night is absolutely fine. Although we do sit outside here as well and we did in Angola. You just have to take your chances sometimes and the worst period is dusk.

We had some people in town earlier in the week and went to Buchanan's and sat outside on the terrace. It's a pretty spot with a huge pond which is Frog Central. The noise they make has to be heard to be believed. Then again, frogs love mosquitoes which is why one can sit outside at Buchanan's and not get eaten alive.

It was nice to get out and about and to have company again although the food was mediocre. There is better food in Lilongwe so Buchanan's don't really have an excuse. I suspect they just have a very bad chef which is a pity because otherwise, it is a really nice place run by a really nice Australian whose family is from Malawi.

We met the owner's parents one night; apparently they have a farm nearby which is where the lamb and beef are produced. I think they originally came from Zim (Zimbabwe) which is where a lot of the Anglo farmers in Malawi and Zambia are from. They fled to 'safer' parts when times got tough. Let's hope Malawi doesn't follow the slip sliding path which is so common in Africa. One wonders if even South Africa will survive while hoping fervently, while holding that thought, that it can. Only time will tell.

It will be my first time back in Cape Town for nine years. We lived beneath the brooding mountain for a year . I must be one of the few people who have lived in Cape Town and who never went up the mountain. Somehow it did not feel right. I suppose a bit like Uluru - there are some 'mountains'  or monoliths, one is not meant to climb.

I could see the mountain from my front door. It rose, dark and forbidding, like a giant scowl, behind where we lived. As often as not the top was completely shrouded in mist. I did not feel it had a benevolent presence and when I did some research into African myths for the area it seemed I was right. It is certainly impressive but I don't regret not going up it and have no intention of doing so on this visit.

I wonder if Cape Town has changed in the past ten years. Probably not. The best bit was always the 'tourist trap' at the Waterfront. The city itself was rundown and seedy and while there were some truly lovely suburbs and we lived in one of them, the crime was as bad, from what I could see, as Johannesburg.

Crime does rather spoil things and it certainly 'sours' one's view of a place. I found living in South Africa harder than living in Angola during the war. I think that was because in Angola the war was a known thing; it was very real although the chances were good that it would not again reach the capital, Luanda. Not certain, but good. 

We would often hear the gunfire at night and wonder if a coup was underway, or see the tracers streaking into the sky and wonder if the rebels were heading our way. They were not. Jonas Savimbi was killed a few days before we were due to leave the country after our four year stay and that was the end of a quarter of a century of civil war.

But while we lived there we had to be protected. We had guards at the gate armed with machine guns 24/7 and when we went out in the car we went with an armed guard.

I won't say I liked it but it was easier than South Africa where despite the deadly 'lick' of razor wire along walls and fences and the ever-present electric fence; guard at the gate and often a dog, the 'war' was hidden or denied. It was as if everyone played a game that it was much safer than it was. I do believe that when your number is up it is up but human nature being what it is, such beliefs do not remove anxiety or even fear. It was not a relaxing place to be and is still not, but time out is time out and life after all is an adventure.

The thing about South Africa was the gratuitous violence. If the house had been attacked in Luanda, and we did come under fire one time when the police were involved in a shootout with car thieves in the street outside, and I am sure our guards joined in, there was a good chance that we would be robbed but not killed.

In South Africa however it was and is a very different matter. If thieves break in there is a very, very good chance you will be shot or killed just because you are white. The hatred is that great and the violence that gratuitous.

Anyone who is lucky enough to not live with such violence or in a society which is heavily armed or at war, is very, very lucky indeed. One of the nice things about Malawi is that for an African country it really is comparatively safe. But the word is comparative. We still have razor wire and an electric fence ... which I think is working again... and guards at the gate. The guards are not armed however but we live in a fenced and gated compound. Such is the way of it in Africa.