If you’ve lived in South Africa for any length of time, you’ll know that the South African Traffic Police have a less than stellar reputation. It’s not that they’re ALL corrupt, it’s just that the many thousand dishonest ones give the two or three honest officers a bad name. I’ve written about them before, but I’ve also had a couple of run ins I didn’t bother to write about. The corruption here would fill a blog all by itself, and […]
Tick Bite Fever isn’t THAT Bad…
You might be reading this because you Googled something like “what does tick bite fever feel like,” or “how bad is tick bite fever,” or “how do I set my internet search history to automatically clear itself when I die.” I can help you with everything except that last one. I have a friend on standby for that. But before we go any further, tick bite fever IS actually that bad. I was just screwing with you in hopes you’d […]
Car Rental Fun in South Africa
*Edit- I originally didn’t name Thrifty Car Hire when I posted this because I thought it was a once off bad experience. But I had another terrible experience with them (which I’ll be writing about shortly), so screw it. Turns out they have an ongoing pattern of hilariously bad service. It was Thrifty. Whatever other bad decisions you make in your life, don’t use Thrifty Car Hire in South Africa. You’re welcome for saving you a boatload of heartache. Have […]
Tips to Survive Load Shedding in South Africa
If you live in South Africa, you’re very familiar with the term “load shedding.” If you’re not from South Africa, you probably have no idea what load shedding is. In a nutshell, load shedding occurs when Eskom, the government monopoly that provides the country with consistently intermittent power, decides to cut off electricity to various parts of the country on a rotating schedule to avoid a complete meltdown of the grid. Eskom tells us there are various reasons for load […]
Hillbrow Isn’t For Sissies (Except For Me And All The Other Chickens Out There)
South Africa isn’t known for being, well, tame. All kinds of insanity (most of it entertaining, some of it simply terrifying) crashes into coddled North Americans like me on a daily basis. But even after two and a half years here, I’ve never felt like I’m in real danger. This is mostly because I take precautions like not counting the stacks and stacks of money I make from this blog out in public, not wearing my meat suit as I […]
The Majestic Hadeda
Quick- what’s the first thing that pops into your mind when you think about South Africa? If you thought of lions, elephants, carjackings, or weird street food, I have no time for you. You’ve clearly not given the pulchritudinous hadeda ibis its due. Yes, yes, I know some other stupid birds hog the limelight. For reasons beyond comprehension, the blue crane is officially South Africa’s national bird. Have you seen one of these suckers in real life though? They have […]
Stranger Danger
We all know that strangers are bad news. I’m not here to refute that. But in my experience, it’s not like they’re any worse than everybody else. I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention to the news lately, but humanity in general is a giant dumpster fire. Everybody is a hot garbage pile, and being a stranger doesn’t really add to or detract from that in my books. So that being said, I interact with strangers all the time. On […]
Maple and Marula- The Book
In case you haven’t pieced it together yet based on my wildly infrequent posts and the overall general shoddiness of the content, this blog isn’t my job. Blogging pays just a little bit less than my other side gig castrating cockroaches (SOMEBODY needs to control their population, and I don’t see YOU jumping to the plate, Judgey McJudgenson). Anyway, what I’m saying is this blog has grown organically (and not from any conscious effort on my part) because it seems […]
Sharing the Good Things
Charity in South Africa is a tricky thing. Everywhere you turn, there’s somebody who needs a hand. You’ll see them at robots (traffic lights for the rest of the world), parking lots, roadsides…all over. And that’s just the people we see. You can’t walk through a mall without being asked to donate to some type of charity in South Africa, and it’s sometimes difficult to sort through the noise- who needs the help the most? Which ones are scams […]
Halloween in South Africa
I’m going to state the obvious here: holidays are fun. Some are nothing more than a day to skip work and get paid for it (I’m looking at you, Family Day), but others prompt people to pull out all the stops and celebrate harder than parents do when their kid finally learns to wipe his/her own keister (if you’re a parent, you’ll understand. If not, just imagine how awesome that moment would be). Easter is dope. Christmas is cool. But […]