Living Like A Local
When we were nomadic and slow-traveling around the world we always said we wanted to see how the locals live. Not that we were “living like locals.” One reason for the choice in phrasing was that we weren't necessarily wanting to experience living without certain creature comforts, like aircon, and although we were shopping at the same shops as the locals, we certainly weren’t living like the locals. As a tourist, we didn’t have the opportunity to deal with the mundane of day-to-day life like setting up accounts with the local utilities, registering a car, getting IDs, etc. Therefore, the distinction between living like a local and seeing how the locals live.
Enter South Africa! We are definitely getting to experience a lot of what truly “living like a local” means!
Jim wrote about our first month here and how we are settling in here, but definitely glossed over a few of the frustrating aspects of our local life here, including the bribe culture created by corruption.
Like what it takes to pick up your new ATM card at the bank. First, unlike our home country of the US, you have to pick up your ATM card at the bank. They don’t mail them to you. Why not, because the mail is so unbelievably unreliable and there is just entirely too much corruption to trust the system. Most everything that is shipped in South Africa is done by courier. As a result, my ATM card was sent to the bank and we received an SMS when it was ready.
They have a fantastic automated system for checking in at the bank: simply select what you are there for on a screen and it prints out a number, along with an approximate wait time. I arrived with no one in line ahead of me, but both “special service” tellers werr busy with other customers. My ticket told me I'd have about a five minute wait. But we've already learned what South Africans mean when they say it's the “slowveld” not the “lowveld.” (Lowveld is a name for this region of South Africa.) So Jim left me there to wait while he went shopping. He was able to get all the shopping done in town and come back to the bank before I was close to getting my card. Ninety minutes after I arrived, I finally got my ATM card. It entailed signing a piece of paper and entering the PIN it came with into the keypad. A few clicks on the computer by the teller and whoohoo: an ATM card!
So, as many countries as I've traveled to, as many cities as I've spent a month or two in, I've never truly lived the local experience. I've never gotten a driver's license (although I have gotten many library cards), a bank account, battled traffic on a daily commute, invested in the local politics, gotten a job, or had to find a plumber to fix a leaky pipe. Sure, I've shopped the local grocery store, hungout where the locals hang, but it was never really “living like a local.”
Other than the “living like a local” tasks, I continue documenting our joys of living here through my camera. It brings me so much joy to walk the neighborhood, sit in our backyard with the wildlife, and enjoy the perfect winter weather.
July 14: We spotted a rough-scaled plated lizard aka a broadleysaurus on our morning walk.
July 15: Sugar Cookies! I definitely need to up my cookie cutter game. Llamas are great and all, but I think we need some local animals!
July 16: The aloe is in bloom- and the sunbirds are loving it!
July 17: Oh the night sky is truly magical here! To see the milky way and so many stars every night!
July 18: I love the kudu with their big curvy antlers and how the antlers mimic the curvy tree branches in the bush.
July 19: An evening walk with a giraffe. Sometimes I still miss not having a dog, but having giraffes is pretty cool.
July 20: starting to make the place ours! First step: a comfy couch! Comfy couches are surprisingly hard to find outside the US. My best friend Janna is an interior designer (J. Kennedy Interiors) and has started working on a design for this space, our ‘retreat’ from the world. I can’t wait to share with you what she comes up with!
July 21: Our thick-tailed bushbaby enjoying dinner at the table with us.
July 22: A purple-crested turaco FINALLY let me take its picture. This pair lives the tree right outside one our windows, but would hide if I popped out to get their picture. On this day, the want for the sweet wild bird seed I was throwing out was too tempting to scare them off.
July 23: Wildebeest! This guy is a loner-quite old, but a handsome boy. Just one more animal in our backyard zoo.
July 24: the skittish impalas are getting hungry. The bachelor herd mills around in the bush behind the house and comes into the yard for game pellets more and more.
July 25: oh zebras! These guys are beautiful, but man, they will eat you out of house and home! When the pellets are gone, they will spend hours “mowing” my grass.
July 26: we've met a few of our neighbors and are loving the outdoor braai/sundowner life here.
July 27: we have a family of cape fowl aka francolins, or as we like to call them, “Bennys” after Ben Franklin. Dad comes running when he sees me throw seed. Mom and the 2 littles are much more cautious though and will only come by if they don’t realize I'm sitting in the backyard.
July 28: Ellies at the river! We don’t see elephants every day at the river, but we see them pretty often!
July 29: A zebra (or 14!) came knocking on the back gate asking if they could come over for dinner.
July 30: On our morning walk, we saw what looked like a face-off between a hippo and an elephant. My money is on the elephant. That hippo has a lot of scars though, so clearly, he is used to fighting!
July 31: A herd of elephants (around 14 or so) enjoyed cooling off in the river. The young and babies are so fun to watch as they play and awkwardly climb around.
August 1: Our thick-tailed bushbaby is a regular visitor now. The other night we were at a friend’s house and I had a moment where I thought…oh no! my poor bushbabies are waiting for their breakfast- haha! Don’t worry, when I got home that night, they got fed!
August 2: The baby bennys are getting a bit less skittish! They still stay close to mom, but now they don’t immediately run for cover in the bush if they notice I’m sitting outside.
August 3: Our new doors on the garage were installed! This is step one to turning the garage into our gym. Next step: gym flooring!
August 4: This family of 9, yes, that’s right, NINE warthogs could eat us out of house and home if we let them. It’s hard to not throw them food when they have perfected the puppy dog look.
August 5: I got a message from Jim that he had just driven by a martial eagle perched at the end of our street. Even though it was getting close to “lion o’clock,” I popped down to check him out as the sun was setting. We think he’s building a nest in this tree since we’ve seen him hanging out there quite a bit.