For the last 12 weeks I have been living and working in Richards Bay South Africa - its a really nice place about an hour and a half drive north of Durban. This is the 3rd time in the last 25 years that I have lived and worked in southern Africa and to tell you the truth I have loved every minute of it. South Africa is so much like Australia in terms of scenary, lifestyle etc. that you sometimes forget where you are. Unfortunately when you take your time to look around you see the security, the razor wire fences, listen to the news reports and read the local papers and start to get an appreciation of just how lucky we are to live where we do. We have had 3 murders, a car jacking and a rape just in this suburb in the past week and it seems to me that people just accept it as just being a part of their life - as much as I love being here I am lucky to be going home next month. Tomorrow I am taking a couple of young Zulus to St Lucia where I will pay for them to do a cruise on the world heritage estuary hopefully to see the hippos - like most of the native population they have never seen their own wildlife, only tourists have the money to waste on such frivolities.
Cheers
BB
-- Edited by The Belmont Bear on Saturday 13th of July 2019 05:04:52 AM
Like you, I have travelled and lived around this world a fair bit and have a pragmatic approach to different countries and their peoples. Good on you for taking the boys? to see the wildlife - it is odd isn't it how we miss so much of the countries in which we live but if you live on poverty wages in the Third (Second) World then that's the way life is.
MarkAC on this forum recently called me a racist but I suspect if he had travelled more he would appreciate there are differences between cultures. Oh well... it's the current term of abuse from people who want to virtue signal.
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"I beseech you in the bowels of Christ think it possible you may be mistaken"
Oliver Cromwell, 3rd August 1650 - in a letter to the General Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland
Thanks Mike as someone who has also lived in different parts of the world you would also have an appreciation for the fact that the best way to get to know a culture is to spend a period of time living and working with people on their own home turf. I find when I am back in Oz many of my friends think that countries like South Africa, Bahrain and Oman (where I was last year) are hostile towards westerners and tourists. In my experience nothing could be further from the truth and I am thankful that during my working life I have been given the opportunity to stay in these sorts of places for extended periods. I don't consider myself as being a racist either but I do have a degree of intolerance for bad behaviour regardless of where a person comes from - and that includes Australia.
