Sunday, 22 February 1987: Dawdling Way Down in Durban

Killarney Hotel, Durban, South Africa, 6:15 PM

I was planning to write more after boarding the train in Zeerust on Friday night.  However, even though most of the compartments in my white 2^nd class car were empty, I was assigned a seat in a compartment with two young soldiers.  South African Railways seems to often assign several people to the same compartment even when there are empty compartments.  I guess it’s less for them to clean up after the train arrives at its destination.  However, it’s good for me because it forces me to meet more people.  My compartment mates were stationed with a South African panzer (armored) division at a base outside Zeerust.  We didn’t talk much and it was soon time to sleep on the slow overnight train to Johannesburg.

After the train arrived in Jo’burg on Saturday morning, I checked into the trains and buses to Durban.  I learned that the train takes 17 hours while the bus takes 6.  Since I only have a one week vacation, I reluctantly opted to take the bus.  I had a couple hours before it left so perused the newspapers and magazines.  The big news locally is the upcoming white elections scheduled in May.  It seems that every few days another politician abandons the sinking National Party (Prime Minister P.W. Botha’s party).  People are deserting both to parties on the far right and to the left, and Botha is likely biting his nails.  The Nat bastards will probably still maintain control of Parliament, but their iron grip on South Africa is loosening.  I wonder how much of this news gets back to the States or if Americans even care very much about South Africa any more.  When I left 10 months ago, South Africa was big news, but the attention span of the American public normally doesn’t last beyond one TV season.  If there wasn’t currently the “Irangate” scandal, the press would have to invent another crisis just to get people to watch TV news and buy more newspapers.

Speaking of the Iran-Contra mess, while I was looking at the magazines, I was reminded how out of touch (or at least, far behind) I am with the happenings back in America.  I stumbled across a week-old copy of Newsweek with a headline on the cover reading, “McFarlane’s Suicide attempt.”  I bought the copy and discovered that Reagan’s former National Security Advisor, Robert McFarlane had swallowed a couple dozen valium pills nearly two weeks ago and this was the first I’d heard of it.  I also heard recently that the Denver Broncos were in the Super Bowl last month but I’ve not learned whether they won or lost.  Suppose I should care, but American football isn’t exactly a hot topic of conversation in this part of the world.

I took this bus from Johannesburg to Durban as the train was way too slow.

 

My bus to Durban was a modern, air conditioned, and relatively comfortable and I arrived in Durban yesterday afternoon after a tedious trip.  I found this old and inexpensive hotel in the downtown and took a nap.

This morning, I walked around downtown, shot some photos, and came back to my room with nothing to do.  So I turned on the tube and watched a 20+ year old movie (“The Nutty Professor” with Jerry Lewis and Stella Stevens).  After I finish writing this I’m doing out for dinner at an Indian restaurant.  There is considerable Indian influence here.  More than 150,000 Indians were brought to Natal Province between 1860 and 1911 to work as indentured laborers on sugar plantations. 

Tomorrow morning, I need to be out early to find a cheap rental car and start travelling around Natal.  If I don’t get moving, I’m going to turn into a lazy, wilted vegetable.  I find the heat and humidity here enervating.  I’m sticky as I’m used to the hot but dry heat of Botswana, not this “steam bath”.  The weather and white sandy beaches in Durban are reminiscent of Miami.  But who wants to be in Miami in late August, the northern hemisphere equivalent of Durban in late February?

Point Yacht Club and Durban’s overbuilt waterfront.