Avocados

Avocados
I roll down the window and offer 20 rand for the avocados encased in plastic netting. The thin black salesman with a gap toothed smile shows a little too much enthusiasm. He knows he would have settled for less. I know it too, but in even in south africa, a little under 3 dollars is a good price for 6 avocados.

At every red light one is accosted by entrepreneurs walking amongst the cars with an amazing assortment of wares including sunglasses, toys, clothing, produce. One particularly persistent young man is sure I need a telephone recharger or at the very least a SA soccer cap. For 2 rand someone will take the trash from your car.

If these folks knew anything about me they would not be so confident strolling around my car. I’m driving a standard shift Renault diesel. Diesel is new to me. It’s been along time since I driven a standard shift and I sure haven’t shifted with my left hand before. The light changes and I pull out reminding myself. “The right turn is the big turn, the right turn is the big turn.” My son has given me only one important rule about driving here.” I don’t care what happens to the car, mom, just don’t hit any people”. They aren’t making that easy.

South Africa has never been high on my list of places to visit. Too foreign – its in africa for heaven’s sake, too much messy politics – heard of Apartheid?. And basically just too far away. I know this. I took a tape measure to a globe. To get farther away from California you would need to either drown or leave the planet.

But just as young children must adjust to their parents in terms of where they go, parents find themselves following where older children go. My son chose to live in this remote location and visit, I must. I could probability have let him go, but he had the audacity to take my grandson with him.

The specific reason for this trip is my granddaughter is about to be born and I’ve been asked to lend a hand. So, as any red blooded grandmother would do, I loaded myself on a 747 and endured roughly 24 hours of modern high tech travel to arrive in a land very different from home, and yet, very much the same.

So here I am, driving down the left side of the street as if it was a normal thing to do. Traffic rules here are, otherwise, pretty much the same as in the U.S. Officially. In fact people drive more aggressively but more courteously at the same time. No one gets outraged at getting “cut off” cause that is pretty much standard operating procedure. Lots of traffic, fewer, narrower lanes, lots of passing. It happens.

One thing to be careful of is the mini-taxis, sometimes called “black-taxis”, to be discussed later. These folks pretty much have their own rules. Go too fast, too slow, occasionally backwards, pull out without looking, change lanes on the fly, whatever. They make money based on getting as many rides from place to place as quickly as possible.

That’s all fine if you expect it and are used to it. It does make things a little more difficult for those of us trying to remember to shift – don’t ever try to start a diesel in anything but first, ever! - to shift on the wrong side, to make big right turns and little left turns and, what was it, or yeah, to not kill anyone.

Nonetheless, avocados in my lap, I’m finally proceeding down a long stretch of quiet road toward my son’s complex.

People live in “complexes”. The crime in South Africa is very high. There is probably safety in numbers. I pull out my remote as I pull up to the large iron gates. There is a guard house bearing a large blue oval sign with the oversize yellow letters “SAS”. Special Armed Services. One of the buttons on my remote will call this armed response, no questions asked. I might add there is no way of backing out once you have called it, this can make for awkward moments.

The iron gates hesitate, like the always do, long enough to make me wonder if my remote is working. Then with a creak I’m slowly invited in as Chris, the guard on duty, waves me through. I enter onto tiled road that winds around and connects 25 very large, modern stylish homes, all of tan stucco that matches the 8 foot stucco wall surrounding the complex. On top of the wall, like all the walls surrounding all the complexes and all the individual homes in this part of Johannesburg, is an electrified fence with dutiful “high voltage” warnings every few meters.

Reaching my son’s home, I push yet another button to raise the garage door and make a hard right down a hill and into the garage. I bring the Renault to a stop and turned it off. Having neither taken off the side of the Gleaming Blue BMW next to me, nor sailed through the front wall of the garage I feel I have, yet again, managed the vagaries of Johannesburg traffic. Maybe I’m even getting the hand of this.