City Life: Africa Style

Just some things I wanna tell you about Africa, poorly collected and type-vomited out to you.....

Money is everywhere.  You can see it in the shiny bank revolving doors, and the gleaming shop windows.  The grocery stores are stocked with produce and shiny bags of snacks.  People carry designer bags and drive luxury cars.  There is no deficit of funds here.

However, only certain people have it.  As much as there is a wealth disparity worldwide, it is HUGE here.  I was constantly noting the farmers/laborers carrying bundles and holding children while walking alongside the highway, past shiny shopping centers and car dealerships.  No one else seemed bothered by the disconnect, as far as I could see.  The poor are dirt poor, and the rich are FILTHY rich.  It really doesn't take much (by my standards, of course) to make a living there, but if you aren't born into support and resources, it's a steep and arduous climb.

Africans know how to eat, quantitatively speaking.  I'm not making a joke about not starving in Africa, but people there know how to put food away.  Whenever I shared meals with locals, I was shocked and ultimately jealous about the serving sizes they heaped on their plates.  They don't, however, really know how to eat vegetables.  I was there for a month, and really only had access to real vegetables when I cooked them myself.  Otherwise, you'll be hard pressed to find a real veggie on the menu, let alone offered to you.

sidenote: also- everything is so SALTY.  My poor kidneys were in revolt this entire trip, constantly trying to clear my body of the pickled-person state I was putting it in.  Yikes,

There are no Asians.  I must un-cheekily report to you that Janni and I were a sensation wherever we went.  We would both report that alone, people would stare intensely and without abandon, but only some would engage.  Together, we were basically the Kardashians.  Locals came up to me and proclaimed that they had never seen an asian live in person before, and gee golly some of the men made sweet sweet comments about our body parts and faces.  I can still hear them turning their heads to sing "hel-loooo, ladies.", as we walked by.  In Durban, my taxi driver told me that to him, I was like a perfect apricot.  He had never seen a slanty before.  Sometimes, it's fun to be a novelty item.  Other times, it's just plain harassment.