We just made a trip to South Africa, a financially intelligent decision as the US dollar is gaining strength in almost every place in the whole world but Mozambique. Matias and I are not known for our financially intelligent decisions, but this was a good one. It takes almost $100 USD to fill up our car in Mozambique, but only cost $67 in South Africa.
The Mozambican government has been fixing our currency, the metical (plural is meticais), for too long, making it artifically strong. Everything Mozambique costs about 35% more now than it did when we arrived a year ago... all because of the devaluation of the dollar. Woe is me, but things here are dang expensive.
So, instead of wallowing in the few meticais our dollars earn, we drive to South Africa and make a side trip to Kruger Park.
We stop at Outdoor Warehouse, the South African equivalent of REI, but with special South African touches. There are small clothes dressers made out of aluminum and mesh that you can set up in your tent. There are enormous rechargable coolers. There are portable braais (barbeques) that you can set up in the bush. To South Africans, owning a braai is tantamount to having a microwave or dishwasher in the U.S. It is essential. And at Outdoor Warehouse, there is every kind of water container you can imagine. No, a Nalgene bottle here would be for lightweights. These are car moutable water containers fit for driving through the Kalahari. Nalia and Elio were thrilled to be back in a land of consumerism and were taking every free moment to hit Matias and I up to buy water guns, butterfly nets, snorkels...
Matias and I were so caught up in fending off the rapid fire of requests from both of them that we didn't notice much else going on.
Then, one of the workers in the store approached Matias... and started speaking Zulu. When we are in South Africa, everyone approaches Matias in Zulu and in Swaziland, Swati. When the guy switched to English, we found out that there was someone in the store watching us. Apparently some malevolent South Africans in and around Nelspruit have figured out a new way to rob Mozambicans. Mozambicans are easily identified by the license plates on their cars, and are particularly good targets because they come to Nelspruit loaded with cash to buy up. The store employee informed us that these malandros (or bad guys in Portuguese) will follow Mozambicans. Then, when they go out to their cars and are driving away, the bad guys will wave at the driver, pretending like something is wrong with the car. You, the driver, then slow down, and they rob you of everything you have, including your car.
Luckily, we were pre-informed by a very benevolent store employee.
Because there is so much crime in South Africa, this has changed the way people live and interact. Most shopping is done in shopping malls, patrolled by guards. Many people live in gated houses or neighborhoods studded with barbed wire, electrified fences, etc. Of course, these people are the ones who have money. There are many poor people in South Africa and they do not live like this.
The next day, we went to Kruger Park to drive through and look at the animals. For safety reasons, you are not allowed to leave your car while at Kruger. When you do get to the camps, where there are places to stay for the night and restaurants, these areas are also surrounded by electrified fences to keep big game out.
Monkeys, however, find a way to get in and target picknicking tourists. I took out yogurts for Elio's lunch (Elio only eats 4 things, one of which is yogurt), and in a split second, a fiesty and fast vervet monkey jumped on the table and scampered away with the yogurt. He knew exactly how to open the foil top and began to dig in. He had perpetrated this crime before. Elio was a wreck, crying, and all the tourists were laughing and taking pictures of the mokey eating Nutriday yogurt.
It struck me then that in South Africa, people live behind fences, behind walls, when they are in or out of the wild areas of the national parks.
But it doesn't stop the yogurt monkeys.
That is great. I'll have to tell Will about the fast little sneaky vervet monkey. Sounds like the equivalent of chipmunks or raccoons here! I was chased by a group of crows recently at the zoo. They were out to steal a sandwich! What did Matias do? Has he experienced this before too?
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