A Post from South Africa

I'm just trying to let SA be whatever it may be and is.  Came here trying to tuck aside any preconceptions or expectations. What was SA going to be like?  Just try to see/live what it is without any prejudgment.  Was Quinton really the name of the Black South African guy who drove me from the Cape Town airport to the hotel?  Or was that just a name he used to make it easier for me/us to connect?  But then you meet others with names like Memory, Innocent, Renaldo, Clive, Jeffrey and ... but no James, Sarah, Mary, William (at least among those I met) - it leaves me sensing that anything I think/know may not serve or have much usefulness as a reference point. I can tell you that I do like this place - whether it's Cape Town, Johannesburg - the amazingly neat and clean farms and vineyards, the on-the-surface mind-shaking realities of Soweto shanties and crowded streets and tumble of markets/stalls/street food with the million rand homes within a stone's throw of "hostels" (places which house 30 male migrant workers in a single structure) and there are rows after rows of these with communal open air faucets and toilets with not much privacy.  An amazing hospital where AIDS, triage, malaria, accident victims, assaults and probably every imaginable kind of medical challenge is an everyday occurrence, but the hospital provides no food - and families use the surrounding markets/stalls in make-do places and floors and against walls to buy/prepare food for their loved ones.  And more, you see people just walking along the streets and roads and standing in the middle of the street/at the intersections either asking for money or tryng to sell some sunglasses, water, whatever.  There are tons of cars and trucks - no really decent public transpotation - so vans filled with 8 people going places.  Yes, I've been to Robben Island and the Apartheid Museum and Mandela - 27 years in prison and the guards and wardens were coming to him for advice!  Seeing some of the video footage of the marches and demonstrations with a surging sea of what seemed like millions of people - the courage of school kids and adults who would not accept Afrikaans being imposed as the language they must use.  A sense that they know this place is their home...their souls are good.