mozambique here i come...

it's official, i'm off to mozambique tomorrow. should be fun. should be cheaper. i hear the beaches are nice. but, i'm not that kind of guy. i think i'm headed to the north.

sorry to leave JNB. it's been really pleasant. the people are really nice. i just met a chinese guy/salesman in a electronics store. he was telling me about the small community of chinese folks in JNB. he's a native JNB'er and married a chinese JNB'er. he says he's a racist. ha! he's been in TO and Vancouver. Said he wants to retire in Canada.

i'll email from maputo.

godwilling, i'll survive mozambique. (considering my lack of knowledge of the portuguese language - i'm limited to obligato, por'va vor, and cervasa. crap. i don't even know how to spell them correctly.)

statistical update of phase one of trip:

km driven: 8000+ km
tanks of gas used: 18.

holding pattern...

hello my friends,

reporting from jo-burg still.

good news! i'm still in one piece.

i slept in this morning and missed the time period in which to apply for a mozambican visa. so, i'm going to have to wait till tomorrow morning. in the meantime, i might be thrown out of my hostel.

yesterday, me and ahmed managed to fit in a tour of the Apartheid Museum and Soweto.

the apartheid museum was really good. i could have spent 4 or 5 hours there but managed 2.5. exhibits were depressing though. at the beginning of the tour i was given an honourary white person's card. i felt quite powerful for some odd reason. in reality, dennis, our tour guide, said that chinese people were classified as blecks in that time. turned out that, the classifications (white, coloured, blecks) were quite arbitrary. some families were split along racial qualifications. approx. 100 chinese people in 1985 changed colours from bleck to white.

anyway, the story of apartheid was quite chilling. they had video clips of government officials in the day defending apartheid. initially, apartheid was enforced because of labour shortages. but, clearly, it turned out to be a racist policy.

afterwards, dennis took us to soweto (stands for SOuth WEstern TOwnships), the area where alot of the bleck brothers were segregated from the white folks. we saw the mandela's little brick house, winnie mandela's house and desmond tutu's house. we then went to seen the po part of soweto. then we went to the very rich part of soweto (where millionaire bleck people live).

overall, i don't think a trip to SA is complete without a tour of soweto or any other townships.

update: i was walking along the road today when i spotted a newspaper with the headline reading "chinese fighting to be black". i thought apartheid was in the past. i believe dennis' observation that, even though there are tough anti-discrimination laws, there is a still a strong undercurrent of racism here. can't fix rome in a day, eh...

wait, this is like work!!

okavango delta: finished.

i liken a mokoro trip into the okavango to spending some time on "the rock", except this rock has a bunch of animals.

finished the tour and hi-tailed it out of there.

started the long journey "home" to johannesburg (that's where i am as i write), at 5 AM. Tried to pick up a wheel cover for the poor rental along the way in Gabarone (Gabs for short). not possible. we've traveled over 8000 km and still could not find a hubcap. we even checked out the hubcap stock of this guy standing by the roadside selling his lost and found collection. nodda. we must have rented the most obscure model of car in the history of rental cars.

like i said i'm in johannesburg now. it's the most violent urban area on the face of the planet. however, as with most outrageous descriptions, jo'burg has not lived up to expectations. we even drove around after dark. we were car-jacked at all.

things i've noticed so far about JNB:

damn it's expensive here.
i've never seen so many bmw's, mercedes, lotus' (loti), ferraris in my life.
affluence is not restricted to da man. a lot of the bros are loaded as well.
the gap between rich and poor is out of control and i mean between the brothers, eh.
people try to emulate the american way of life. if you can see the consumerism here you'd think could be the other way around.

my friend, ahmed, leaves tomorrow for colder climes... i'll be all alone. yikes. i'm feeling a bit scared.

note: who's ed stelnack?

later.