The Hidden Fence

I admit, this is advertisement for an airline here in my blog. But the reason for this is not that they are the best, fastest or most friendly airline; it is their announcements that have to be mentioned here!

Have you ever listened to those boring safety instructions on EasyJet, Swiss or what ever airline you were flying? I suppose not. Well, the South African low price airline Kulula has found a way to attract your attention.

I have put together parts of their announcements on my two last flights from Johannesburg to George and back.

Now travellers, safety is very important, so please listen up. Ensure that any hand luggage does not block the aisles or the exits. […] For take-off and landing your tray table should be folded away, you seat back upright, the armrest down and your seat-belt should be fastened around those gorgeous hips. Now for our first time fliers: your seat-belt is fastened, adjusted and released. Whenever the fasten seat-belt signs are on, please return to your seat and fasten your seat-belt securely.

The safety card in your seat pocket is not a menu, but will give you [information about] escape routes, oxygen masks and floatation devices. It also shows the emergency landing brace position. Now there are many ways to leave your lover, but only eight ways to leave this aircraft. The crew will point them out to you now: there are two doors in the front, four over-wing exits and two doors in the back. […]

In the very, very unlikely event of a loss of cabin pressure, free oxygen will be provided. Oxygen masks will pop out automatically on both sides of the aircraft. Stop screaming and pull the mask towards you with a sharp [jerk] to activate the flow of oxygen. Then quickly cover your mouth and nose and breath normally. Please assist follow passengers and children if necessary.

Because we fly over the Hartbeespoort Dam, life jackets are stowed underneath your seat. On instructions of the crew, remove the jacket from the pouch, pull it over your head, fasten these straps around your waist and pull down on these straps to inflate the jacket. Do this only when you leave the aircraft. This [tube] is for inflation and this is the light to keep in contact.

But also other announcements are rather extraordinary:

Just a friendly reminder that this is a non-smoking flight and if you do try your luck, [we will] fine you 3000 Rand and for that price you might have flown SAA this afternoon. Cellphones and any other vibrating battery operated appliances interfere with the aircraft system and [ask you] to keep them switched off. - Now sit back, relax and enjoy your flight with us.

And before leaving the aircraft, we got another good advice:

When leaving the aircraft please make sure, you take all your belongings with, because anything left behind will be distributed [between] this crew. And if you still wish to leave anything behind, please make sure that it’s something the crew would want […]. No children, thank you! The crew wanna thank you for flying the easy way with us today […] and we hope to see you again on board very soon.

Now, you might think this is crazy, but on the flight back, it got even better:

Folks, thank you for making our airline your choice of travel on this super-holiday. […] Please make sure right now that your seat is in an upright position with the armrests down and also fold away the tray tables. […]

To be safe and secure in your seat, you have to fasten the seat-belt around those gorgeous hips. […] Your seat-belt is fastened, adjusted and released as demonstrated. Whenever the fasten seat-belt signs are on - bling - we may ask you to please return to your seat and fasten your seat-belt. The safety feature card in the seat pocket in front of you is not a menu - no-no - [it shows you the use of safety features like] escape routes, oxygen masks and flotation devices.
It will also show you the famous brace position that you must adopt in a event of an emergency landing. […] In the unlikely event of the Blue Bulls beating the Durban Sharks - eishhh - or in the unlikely event of a loss of cabin pressure, oxygen masks will drop automatically from the panel above you on your left as well as on your right hand side. Now, stop screaming […], grab the mask, pull it towards you […], quickly cover your nose and mouth and breath normally.

On our way to Johannesburg, we will fly over the [Hartbeespoort] Dam. So in the unlikely event of water landing these Gucci life jackets are stowed under your seat. On instructions from the crew remove the jacket from its pouch, pull it over your head [and] fasten those tapes tightly around your waist. Very important, folks, only [when about] to jump into the water and swim, […] pull down on the red tags - shhhhhhhhhhh. […] And to inflate more, you’ve got a mouthpiece - blow, baby, blow!

And to keep in contact, you’ve got a light. Kulula customers, this light can last up to eight hours, thereafter it will be load-shedded. […]

Folks, cell phones, all makes of cell phones, even the big ones that can go to “in flight mode option” [interfere] with our avionic systems. So please keep them switched off. Even your blackberries, strawberries and the blueberries; keep them switched off. You may use your laptop computer, iPods, MP3 players, PSPs, lawn-mowers or washing machines, but only during the cruise stage of the flight.

And of course a few more jokes when landing:

Please remember to leave all those cellphones switched off until the aircraft doors are opened.
When you enter the airport building, remember that smoking, [bad] language and nose picking is only allowed in designated areas.

We also want to ask you not to pull funny faces to those Mango passengers as it is now considered a serious offence.

Please check the seat pockets and all around your seat for your personal belongings as anything left behind will be auctioned on our next flight to cover crew expenses. And if it is really nice, we will divide it amongst the crew. […]

If you are here on holiday, we don’t know why, [but we hope] that you will have a memorable experience. And if you are [getting] home, welcome back! We sincerely hope that you find your car where you parked it. And when you find your car, we hope that […] your radio will still be there.

On behalf of our captain […] and the rest of the Kululean crew we would like to thank you for flying the easy way with us today. We hope you had a fun flight and that we can welcome you on board of one of our flight in the very near future. Enjoy your week ahead […]. We hope to see you again. Good bye.

P.S.: Sorry for the gaps, it was not easy to understand everything in those noisy recordings.

I have already written about it, and you also find a few pictures about South African roads in my gallery, but I read those two articles in “The Citizen” on 24 April that I would like to share with you.

25 KIDS CRAMMED IN STATION WAGON
Cape Town traffic officials discovered 25 schollchildren crammed into a Toyota Cressida station wagon they stopped in a routine check this week, the city’s traffic services division said yesterday.
Spokesman Merle Lourens said the vehicle was stopped on Spine Road, Khayelitsha, on Monday.
“Twenty-five schoolchildren were found squashed inside,” she said.
She said the driver was charged for overloading the vehicle by 10 passengers and for not having a driver’s license.
Fines were also issued because the car was neither licensed nor roadworthy, aand it was suspended from use on public road.
This meant the owner had to take it for an obligatory roadworthy test. (SAPA)

One in two SA drivers fall victim to road rage
South African road rage records indicate that one out of two drivers on South African roads experience aggressive or threatening driving behaviour.
According to a recent survey by Synovate, road rage is South Africa reached a record high of 51% over the last two readings (August 2008 and April 2009).
Even though the record is lower than the 2005 record which put South Africa at the top globally, the results indicate that South African drivers continue to be aggressive on the roads.
The survey says the most common forms of road rage experienced on South African roads are aggressive or threatening driving behaviour or rude gestures and verbal insults. These have been experienced by 51% of the driving population.
Although rude gestures and verbal insults continued to slightly increase in number, the most dangerous from of read rage, physical assault - the use of a weapon - has dropped slightly.
Johannesburg had the highest levels of read rage. But the city has demonstrated a slight decrease in physical assault as a result of road rage from 2,5% to 1,8%.
Cape Town drivers experienced the lowest levels of road rage. Only 4% of drivers got out of their vehicles. In Durban road rage was found to be at a low level, but drivers were reported to settle differences on the road by using physical assault or weapon.
Other road rage behaviours highlighted by the records were the persistent flashing of headlights - experienced by 24% of drivers - and constant hooting - experienced by 25%. (Puleng Mashabane)

It has been over two months since I last wrote a blog post. The reason for this is not that I wouldn’t have any interesting subjects, but I was rather busy organizing the next big move in my life: next month I will be relocating to California. I hope that, once settled down, I get again time to write some more blog posts, perhaps also a retrospective post about my year in South Africa.

From the subjects I still have in mind, I chose for now the most newsworthy one: the “Zuma elections” on 22 April. Of course we are here in a democratic country with a multitude of parties from which people can chose their favourite. Also the elections will most probably be fair in legal terms. Zuma won’t be elected with 100% of the votes, but his party, the African National Congress (ANC), will with the utmost probability win the elections and therefore he will become the next president of the Republic of South Africa.

Driving through the streets of Joburg, but also in other regions like KwaZulu-Natal or the Cape, most election posters are promoting the members of the ANC. Since there there is still a big percentage of illiterates in this country, those posters only have a picture of the candidate and a few words in any of the contry’s 11 languages (mostly English, Afrikaans, Zulu and Xhosa) on a yellow background; yellow beeing the ANC’s main colour.

The world is of course mostly interested in these elections because of Zuma’s past: over 700 corruption charges have been layed down about a week ago, so Zuma is officially no more a criminal. Knowing that even the president-to-be has (or had) corruption charges against him, is not really promising for the future of South Africa. Besides crime, corruption is the biggest issue this country has to face; or even the biggest since the whole crime problem results mainly from a over-corrupt police system.

Several people have enthused to me about how the country was before “the change” - meaning the 1994 end of the Appartheid regime. I don’t know this country well enough to judge those statements, but it seems to me they were at least right in one point: the political system as well as the whole administration must have worked much better than it does nowadays.

It will be interesting to observe how much better (or worse?) the situation will get under Zuma. What I’m the most concerned, is how the situation will change for the whites in South Africa. At least in Johannesburg a majority of the people I’m in contact with, want to leave the city or the country. The reason for this is to a large degree the criminality in and around the city which has of course a very bad influence on the quality of life. Those whites who are lucky, already have an (inherited) foreign passport, the others try to get one by studying overseas or getting a job for an international company.

We will know the outcome of the elections next week and the world will judge the results of the Zuma government at latest in 2010 when the FIFA Soccer World Cup takes place in South Africa.

Meine Blog-Posts werden seltener. Das bedeutet, dass ich mich langsam ans Leben hier in Johannesburg gewöhne und Sachen wie Fussgänger auf der Autobahn oder riesige Schlaglöcher à la “Tiefer als man denkt” mitten in der Stadt durchaus “normal” werden.

Doch heute möchte ich einmal etwas positives hervorheben: die Wirtschaftskrise, oder eher die Tatsache, dass Südafrika bis jetzt zu einem grossen Teil von ihr verschont bleibt.

Klar sind die Banken auch indirekt betroffen von der weltweiten Krise, doch selber haben sie sich nicht verschuldet: sie waren immer recht konservativ mit ihrer Anlagepolitik. Zugegebenermassen kann man in Europa nur von Zinsen gegen 10% p.a. auf Sparkonten nur träumen, doch lag die Inflationsrate des Lebenshaltungskostenindex (CPIX) hierzulande 2008 bei (geschätzten) 11.6%. Wir bekamen das sozusagen sofort nach den Weihnachtsferien zu spüren: die meisten Schnellimbisse und Restaurants erhöhten ihre Preise um 10 bis 15%.

Dieses Land hat seit dem Ende der Appartheid 1994 noch so viel aufzuholen, dass ein Wirtschaftswachstum von über 1% noch realistisch erscheint. Billige Arbeitskräfte sind zu hauf vorhanden; die offizielle Arbeitslosigkeit lag im September 2008 bei 23.2%. Und so kommt die Diskussion auf, ob man den Mindestlohn noch weiter senken sollte. Zur Zeit ist der Mindestlohn job-abhängig und beträgt zum Beispiel minimal zirka 150 CHF pro Monat im Verkaufssektor.

Dass Südafrika nicht mehr in den Strudel der Wirtschaftskrise hineingezogen wird, hängt sicher auch damit zusammen, dass das Land während der Appartheid gezwungen war, selbstversorgend zu werden. Die Handelsembargos der meisten Länder gegen die damaligen Regierungen hatten zur Folge, dass Südafrika die meisten Produkte selber herstellt und auch (noch) nicht allzu sehr vom Export lebt. Mit Ausnahme der Minenindustrie natürlich; doch gerade in Krisenzeiten ist Gold gefragter denn je.

Über die bald anstehenden Wahlen berichte ich ein anderes Mal, aber zum Schluss doch noch ein (politisch heikles) Zitat ausgesprochen an der MPH Show vor zwei Wochen:

I thought you have to go to prison, before becoming a South African president.

Over Christmas and New Year I flew back to Switzerland. It was really a good trip and I had the chance to meet almost all my friends. I spent seven days in the Alps in Rougemont near Gstaad and of course I went skiing.

When flying back to South Africa, I asked myself the question:

Am I flying back home or am I coming from home?

Or more generally, is home where you live or where you come from? I don’t know the answer and I think it is not easy to answer at all. I think most people living abroad have this feeling. You feel somehow attached to your roots, and perhaps you are even proud about them.

I only realised what I liked most about Switzerland when I wasn’t there anymore. So for example I just had to travel around the whole holidays by train because I missed it so much. Also the ability to walk freely in the streets: Swiss (like myself before I left for South Africa) just take it for granted, that they can walk in the city.

There are plenty of other examples like those, and I don’t speak about the obvious things like Swiss cheese or Swiss chocolate! The opposite applies: you can very easily export goods, but you can’t export a way of life, punctuality or security.

After all those thoughts one thing is for sure: I would never like to miss the experiences I’m having here in Johannesburg and in South Africa in general. It broadens one’s horizon more than I ever expected.

Vor genau 6 Monaten, am 1. Mai 2008 bin ich hier in Südafrika angekommen. Die Zeit schnell vorbei gegangen und in knapp 2 Monaten fliege ich schon zum ersten mal wieder nach Hause; Weihnachtsferien bei der Familie und hoffentlich auch die einen oder anderen Freunde treffen.

So langsam beginne ich die sonderbaren Sachen hier in Südafrika als normal zu empfinden und auch meine englsiche Sprache hat immer mehr typisch südafrikanische Wörter drin. So passe ich mich täglich mehr an das Leben hier an; nur an eines werde ich mich nie gewöhnen können: die Kriminalität. Egal mit wem man spricht, alle können einem eine Geschichte erzählen, was ihnen oder Verwandten schon alles passiert ist.

Inzwischen ist hier Sommer. Der Frühling mit den angenehmen Temperaturen und den wunderschönen violetten Jacaranda-Bäumen ist leider schon wieder vorbei. Jetzt haben wir regelmässig abends mehr oder weniger kräftige Gewitter, was nach etwa 30°C warmen Tagen auch wieder etwas Abkühlung bringt, neben dem Pool vor meiner (immer noch provisorischen) Wohnung ;-).

Auf jeden Fall war das letzte halbe Jahr, eine sehr spannende Erfahrung. Ich hoffe im nächsten Jahr, wenn ich wieder Ferientage habe, auch noch andere Ecken dieses interessanten Landes zu entdecken. Wunschziele sind Durban und Kapstadt, denn das Meer vermisse ich hier auf 1500 m.ü.M. schon ein bisschen.

Today’s 12 o’clock news made me think, I should write once more about the traffic. Let me start with today’s bad news: two people were killed and another 15 injured when a minibus taxi collided with a car. 21 workers were injured when their truck overturned. These are just the two worst accidents, many more could be added to this list only for today around Joburg.

The at least 17 people involved in the minibus accident show how crowded these taxis are. Where in Europe you would place 9 persons including the drive in such a car (still less than 3.5t), you can easily fit 15 persons in it; the taxi might then have problems to drive uphill or brake within a reasonable distance, but you can drive it!

The second accident shows another means of transport: small open trucks, normally used for merchandise, can carry over 20 workers to their construction site. This works independent of temperature and weather conditions (e.g. rain and wind). Such a truck can still drive at over 100 km/h on the highway. One can understand why there are such terrible accidents.

Every morning in the traffic updates, you hear the list of “traffic lights out of order”. This can be because there is no power in the whole suburb or just because the robot (South African word for traffic light) is out of order. Those traffic lights are then treated as four way stops, which works quite well (of course only if you leave priority to the minibuses). The right of way is by order of arrival at the intersection which works incredibly well.

Traffic gets worse with the weather: last Wednesday it took me about one hour (instead of 15 minutes) to get home from work. It rained a lot and in addition to that, we had a power failure in quite a big part of Sandton (north of Johannesburg). The highway was totally blocked and so were all roads leading to it. Of course all the side roads were affected as well, thankfully I had like every day downloaded the latest podcast of the Swiss radio “Echo der Zeit” to which I listened while driving through this chaos.

Cycling is quite a popular sport here in South Africa. Since I already cycled in Switzerland and I had to do some sport here, as I have to drive by car everywhere, I decided to join a cycling club. The CycleLab SuperCycling Club is one of the best known cycling clubs in Johannesburg. For a yearly fee you can ride as often as you want. Saturday and Sunday morning (at 6 AM in summer!) the club rides start from CycleLab in Fourways. But also during the week there are club rides.

Since this means for me getting up at about 4:30 AM, I only go on the Saturday morning rides. The ride is on a very nice route to the Cradle of Humankind, north west of Joburg. There are several different groups from the very fast A down to the D+, D and even E. I started riding with D and now I am in D+, which is about 25 to 26 km/h average speed. The route is about 75 km long.

Thanks to my Nokia N95 and Sportstracker, I record every ride I make, so I can compare them. For demonstration purposes I have made the ride on last Saturday visible to everybody. I also took my camera (mounted on top of the Joby Gorillapod tripod) with me, so have a look at the pictures in the gallery.

No, I didn’t eat at McDonald’s today; since I have seen Super Size Me by Morgan Spurlock, I have never been to this fast food chain again. And there are plenty other fast food restaurants available in South Africa: for example ANAT, Fontana, KFC, Steers, Wimpy and of course many more.

This post is about the Big Mac Index, or generally about prices here in South Africa. To start with, a Big Mac costs 16.95 R (Rand) which is at the current currency rate (7.20 R = 1 CHF) about CHF 2.35 (Swiss Franks); in Switzerland the same item costs CHF 6.50 (about 2.75 times more than in South Africa). Food in general is quite cheap here, not surprising if you think about the fact that also a gardener which earns about 30 R (CHF 4.15) per day needs to be able to buy food. It is quite normal here to eat lunch for between 25 and 40 R (CHF 3.50 - 5.50). Even in the more expensive restaurants the prices are still about the same as you pay in any normal restaurant in Switzerland.

Quite interesting is that products, which are also available in Europe, are still much less expensive here. And that even thought the VAT (MwSt) is 14% for everything except some basic food items (no VAT) - compared to the 7.6% (2.4% for food).

Some might now think that this is due to the different levels of quality, but this is only the half truth: meat has about the same quality and of course al the “western” items too. Well not all: as a non representative example I take the Tic Tacs: while the Swiss Tic Tacs are made in France, the South African come from Ecuador and have a totally different taste.

As a last word I would like to mention that a software engineer’s salary here is about the half of what it is in Switzerland.

Der 1. September ist offizieller Frühlingsanfang hier, doch das Wetter hält sich nicht so ganz daran: letzte Woche ist eine Warmfront durchgezogen und so hatten wir “Johannesburg: 5 and 25″, wie es am Radio jeden Morgen so schön heisst. Also nachts 5°C und tagsüber 25°C, doch gestern hat sich mit einem kräftigen Sturm eine Kaltfront angekündigt, die die Temperaturen nachts wieder gegen 0°C fallen lässt, doch keine Angst: tagsüber wird es immer noch fast 20°C.

Heute ist es nun auch schon vier Monate her, dass ich nach Südafrika gekommen bin. Der August war ein sehr abwechslungsreicher und spannender Monat. So habe ich zwei wunderschöne Gegenden dieses riesigen Landes kennengelernt: den Krüger Nationalpark und die Drakensberge. Von beiden will ich ganz kurz berichten:

Krüger Nationalpark

Eine viertägige Reise brachte mich vom 1700 m.ü.M. gelegenen Johannesburg ins Lowveld, das Tiefland im Osten von Südafrika an der Grenze zu Mosambik. Auf der Panorama Route gelangten wir an den Rand des Highveld und hatten von dort einen schönen Blick auf den riesigen Krüger Nationalpark - zur Zeit ungefähr die Fläche Belgiens und mit Plänen, ihn zirka auf die Fläche der Schweiz auszudehnen. Danach verbrachten wir fast drei Tage im Park und hatten das Glück, zahlreiche Tierarten und eine wundervolle Landschaft zu sehen.

Drakensberge

Zwei Wochen später hiess es schon wieder “Koffer packen”, denn es ging in die Höhe: die Drakensberge (deutsch: Drachenberge) sind eine Bergkette, die bis zu 3500 m.ü.M. hoch sind. Wir waren am Rand des “Royal Natal National Park” stationiert und auf unseren täglichen Wanderungen sahen wir die schroffen Wände des Amphitheatre und stiegen sogar hinauf auf über 3000 m.ü.M. Für die Südafrikaner in unserer Gruppe gabs sogar eine Seltenheit: Schneefall.