Monday, 12 May 1986: A New Week, A New Province, and A New City

10:30 PM, Home of Woolfie & Irene Joffa, Bloemfontein, Orange Free State

Arrived here this afternoon on an SAA 737 from Johannesburg.  A short flight as Bloemfontein (locally called Bloem) is only about 220 miles southwest of Jo’burg.  Not much exciting to say about the flight.  It left and arrived on time.  The take-off and landing were somewhat rough (afternoon turbulence, I suppose) but the flight was smooth otherwise.  The seats were three and three with an aisle down the middle.  The announcements were read in both English and Afrikaans, and the pilot broke in every 10 or 15 minutes to tell us where we were.  I made sure to get a window seat and observed miles and miles of flat to slightly rolling farm country.  Woolfie Joffa, my Rotary Club host here, referred to the area between Jo’burg and Bloem as South Africa’s breadbasket.  There wasn’t much “bread” down there now as the maize and other grain has been harvested and the fields look predominantly brown.  Gone are summer’s afternoon thunderstorms replaced by warm, dry days and cool, dry nights.  There will be little rain again until October (next spring).  Snow?  The last they had in Bloem was in June 1964.  According to Woolfie, the city practically shut down for two days as a result.

 A couple more notes about the flight – after all, I should give SAA a review in exchange for their free ticket.  They had a good selection of beverages but I found it odd that they don’t give you a serviette (napkin) with your drink.  So after I squeezed my lemon into my club soda, I had to wipe my sticky fingers on my handkerchief.  Not that they didn’t have napkins.  A young woman seated next to me was carrying a wedding bouquet.  There was no good place to put it except her lap.  So the stewardess brought her a bunch of napkins to put on her lap so she wouldn’t spill water all over her dress. 

All in all, I’d say that SAA is as conscientious about safety, efficiency, courtesy, etc. as most U.S. carriers.  There is one small difference.  Although they tell you about seat belts, smoking, and so forth, the stews don’t patrol the aisles like hawks to make sure you are complying.  Of course, they don’t have the FAA breathing down their necks, but as far as I could see, it wasn’t necessary to check up on passengers.  Everyone seemed to be complying.  People in South Africa generally seem to follow the “rules”’ more than they do in America.  Up to a point, that’s good – especially when it comes to seat belts and smoking.  On the other hand, they probably have less of a tendency to question authority when it comes to larger issues like government policies.  In the U.S., we sometimes have to sacrifice law and order for the sake of personal liberties.  In South Africa, it seems to be the other way around.  People here seem more concerned about the need for rules.  Could it have to do with the Calvinist background of the Afrikaners?

Bloemfontein has about 160,000 people and is the capital of the Orange Free State province which was an independent Boer (Afrikaner) republic before the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902).  This is the judicial capital of South Africa as the South African Appeals (Supreme) Court meets here. Bloem gets a lot of “negative press” from English-speaking South Africans in other parts of the country.  They consider it a desolate, backward burg in the heart of “Afrikanerdom”.  It’s so conservative that Asian-Indian South Africans are not allowed to live here, or anywhere in the Orange Free State, for that matter.  I was expecting the city to look like Topeka, Kansas or Fargo, North Dakota.  Appearance-wise, however, Bloem is surprisingly attractive.  There are a number of koppies (flat-topped hills) in and around the city.  Moreover, Bloem is blessed with a pleasant California-like climate with diverse flowers and vegetation.

Woolfie drove me to the top of one of the koppies this afternoon.  It’s called Naval Hill because the British built a fort on its summit during the Boer War and installed large guns, used on ships, to shell the town.  The view from Naval Hill is not spectacular but the ambiance of many cities in the monotonous American Midwest would improve 100% if they could have views like this.

  

View of downtown Bloemfontein from Naval Hill

 

The top of Naval Hill is about one square mile in area (250 hectares) and is a wildlife refuge.  Not just for squirrels and ducks, mind you, but big hoofed beasties.  This afternoon, we spotted a herd of 20-30 impala, about ½ dozen eland (these guys have 2+ foot long straight, parallel horns), a few springbok, and a couple of ostriches who decided to stop traffic for a few minutes.  Woolfie said there are also giraffes at the refuge but they seemed to be hiding today.  It was nice to learn that all these big critters are running loose in the middle of the city.  According to Woolfie, one or two of them will occasionally stray down on to someone’s lawn at the foot of the hill.