Reflections on South Africa

South Africa has a great deal of poverty. There were poor people everyplace we went. In Qwa Qwa the unemployment was 78%. When we visited in the homes, we only saw one male. We weren’t sure where the other men were if they weren’t working. We did see a lot of them walking or sitting beside the roads.

It seemed that the care of infants was totally in the hands of mothers or grandmothers. A lot of grandparents cared for their grandchildren. One family would take their 7 year old son to a town an hour away and leave him with his grandparents for 2 weeks at a time. They didn’t see him for those 2 weeks. There didn’t seem to be much playing with the children either. The infants were put on the backs of the women and held there by blankets wrapped around the women.
There was no recycling that we were aware of in South Africa. Pop cans were garbage. There was more aluminum in the cans there than in America. When I would pick up a soda pop can, I would think there was still some pop left in the can because it was heavier than our cans. No recycling of paper products either. There wasn’t a lot of litter along the roads, however.

The food was good, and fairly inexpensive. I had a 17 oz (600 g.) T bone steak dinner for $5.25. Some stores didn’t have a lot of variety, but they had some of everything we wanted. Snack foods cost about the same as here, however. Peanut butter was made differently, potato chips were about the same, they didn’t serve potatoes like we do. Often we were served a corn meal porridge for breakfast called pap. I really liked it. It tasted a lot like cream of rice, but I think it had more flavor. They also served it thicker with a sauce you could put on it as part of the meals for lunch and dinner. I liked it so much, I bought some to bring home. I’ve made it a couple of times here. I really don’t like corn meal, but this is totally different. It is white and finely ground. I paid 70 cents for 500 grams.
They also used a lot of cream. The soft serve ice cream seemed creamier. They had shelves of cream. They sold full milk, what we would call whole milk, in refrigerators like we do, but also in boxes that keeps at room temperature for 6 months. Once opened, it needs to be refrigerated. A lot of people used that milk.