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We are in Nelspruit and the rainy season has started. Last night and this morning thunderstorms, black skies and pouring rain. We had a leisurely breakfast at “Mug and Bean”, but reading the morning paper is very sobering. A report about 43 children under 18 being raped every hour in this country, numerous killings of children by an estranged parent and the usual robbery murders. There are about 1500 carjackings in Johannesburg every month and the security firms and automobil tracking services run frequent ads on TV. Right next to the automotive pages are the erotic classifieds catering to every taste, gender and ethnicity.
Currently there is a nationwide campaign against violence towards women and children.
We went to a nice shopping mall and noticed that the customers were almost exclusively caucasian, the same picture as in the dinner restaurant last night. 10 % of the population in South Africa is white and they still are among themselves in a lot of places. All the nicer neighborhoods have walls and electric fences around the properties and signs on the entrances threaten the property being protected by an armed response service.
Last night we had dinner in a restaurant that looked like TGIF and an American Football game was shown on the TV behind me. You could not tell that you were outside the US until about 8 PM when the people started to go home. The nights here definitely do not belong to the white minority. We follow the same custom and are usually back in the hotel by 8PM.

Today was one of the highlights of our self-guided Kruger Park safari. We found one male and one female lion trying to rest in the shade on the side of the dirt road. The temperature was hovering around 102 Degrees F and the big cats were panting, exposing their beautiful teeths ( called fangs I believe). I positioned our rental car within 10 feet from the lions and asked Gabi to open her window to take pictures. ( I was sitting on the side away from the lions, but reassured my wife, that I was right behind her!) We are here to talk about it and spent about 30 minutes parked next to the great cats.
At one point Mister Lion got up and tried to wake up his wife(?). She was very grouchy and scared the suitor and us with her roar of refusal. Gabi’s comment: Even for lions it is too hot for sex.

Today we left the Shingwedzi Camp in Kruger Park and drove south looking for animals.The park is so huge, that you could be driving for an hour and not see an animal. We are getting pretty good at reading the signs of animals nearby and soon we see an elephant’s footprints on the dirtroad. There are treebranches scattered all over the the road ( leftovers from the elephants’ meal) and all off a sudden a big elephant bull is strolling along the dirt road ahead of us. This guy is big and takes up the whole width of the road. We have to stop and crawl behind him since there is no way to go around the elephant. He continues ripping out treebranches and eating the new leaves of springtime. I am getting a little impatient after this guy has been holding us up for about 20 minutes. Revving up the VW Jetta’s engine does not impress him, so I decide to drive the car up close behind him. Big mistake! All of a sudden he turns around and faces us, now looking pretty mad.

His huge ears are out to the side of his head, the trunk is raised up in the air and he looks like he is ready to charge us. In no time, I have the VW moving in reverse and Gabi is yelling at me now. She is pretty mad at me for trying to threaten a 5 ton elephant with a 2 ton VW Jetta. Lucky for us, the bull does not charge and trample our car into the dust ! Even German engineering would not hold up against this elephant. When I backed up, he probably knew that he had won the duell and did not consider the little VW a worthy opponent. As a matter of fact these elephants do not have any natural enemies and are not afraid of anything, including lions.
In the afternoon we are at South 23 °26′ 18″, East 31°20′ crossing the Tropic of Capricorn. At noontime on December 21st the sun is going to be straight overhead here.
In the afternoon we arrive at the beautiful Olifants Rest Camp, overlooking the Olifants river, and enjoy an amazing sunset from our hut # 1.( See Gabi’s post for Olifants)

While starting down our way to pay tribute to the David Livingstone statue at Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, two interesting things occured:
1. I realized teenagers, no matter where, were always questioning what was told to them—a very good thing!
2. It was reaffirmed to me that children are inquisitive and want to learn, given the opportunity–a very necessary thing!

So, as I was taking a photo of the “discoverer” of the Victoria Falls, a young black gentleman comes by and says to his younger companion, ” He didn’t really discover them, they were always here”. And I thought, a point well taken, Livingstone just happenend to be traveling and came upon a natural phenomena. The boy was thinking and questioning what had been fed to him through teachers and texts.
Next along the route to the Falls were a group of Mama monkeys picking fleas or lice of their offspring. Photo opportunity #2! Little did I know that I had a little boy watching the whole manuever of getting the best picture. I get this tug on my arm and the little boy asks, “Maam, can I see, peeze? One of the best portions of the trip followed. Within a nanosecond of showing the boy, the just taken pic on my LCD monitor, I had a group of about 30 children, from a grammar school, aged 6-13, all around me, wanting to see the same thing. I willingly enlarged the picture each time so that they could see the larger image. They were so enthralled, that I asked their teachers, if I may take a picture of the children, realizing this may be the first time that they see themselves on a photo image. Not only 1 or 2 children wanted that opportunity, but all wanted it, so I figured maybe a group shot would be best. Took the pic and dutifully showed it to each of them, always enlarging, so that they could really see themselves.

Their eyes shone like when you see something for the first time in your life! I knew I had to get the address of this school, so that I could make this a permanent memory for them. While the headmistress of the school gave me the address, she asked if I could also take a picture of all the staff. Once again I went through the process and one of the teachers said to me, “This is now a friendship between the United States and Zimbabwe”, “next time you come, you come and visit the school”. Too bad it was their final trip of the semester and school was out for the holidays. After a couple fo minutes and we were already on our way to actually seeing the Falls, one of the students, a Level 7 girl comes up to me, real shyly, and asks, “Do you think that you can find me someone to write to in the United States, I want to learn more about the world, I can tell them about Zimbabawe” . She just touched my arm slightly and I knew I would! This is what being a traveller and teacher is all about, meeting the people of the world and creating connections!

We went to see Victoria Falls, which is very impressive. The great Zambezi river plunges down about 100 meters into the gorge along an approximately 500 meters wide section. There are several separate waterfalls this time of year, since it has not yet rained. In April and May there is so much water coming down that the spray could make it difficult to see the waterfall itself. At night we had a Zambezi beer at sunset sitting on the bank of the Zambezi river. I was wondering, how long it had taken for the water from the river to make it into the beer bottle. During the day we had purchased one bottle of water for 20 000 Dollars ( Zimbabwe Dollars that is) and noticed that the cap opened too easily. There must be a reason that you could not buy sparkling water, but only still water in Victoria Falls.
While we hiked along the rim of the waterfall gorge, we witnessed something pretty crazy. Some white tourists had climbed to the edge of the Zambezi river and were taking a swim in a rock basin right on the edge of the 350 foot drop. They probably have never heard of schistosomiasis ( or Theodor Bilharz, the German physician in Cairo, Egypt( 1825-1862), who had discovered the Biharzia parasite).
We left Victoria Falls after only two days since there was nothing else to do and we objected to being treated like cash cows. Foreigners have to pay higher prices than Zimbabwe citizens and it has to be in hard currency. The restaurant menues do not list any prices, since they are subject to frequent changes. I read a newspaper ad offering 103% interest on a 90 day CD ! Maybe I should start investing here. They can not keep up with printing the money and as change we received promissary notes that look like monopoly money. I actually learned that the Zimbabwe government does not have the necessary funds to buy the ink and paper from Germany to print more money.
Our going- away- present in Zimbabwe was being sprayed with insectizide while sitting in the plane before take-off. The flight attendants’ instructions were : ” Close your eyes and mouth” while emptying the spray cans on us.
Good bye Zimbabwe ! The people were really friendly, but they live with difficult conditions.