Sylvia's Journal

On Saturday evening I said goodbye to Sita and her family for their long trip home. I thought of them in their cramped economy class seats while I had an enormous king size bed all to myself – better than first class.

On the morning of my departure to Jo’burg I enjoyed a solitary breakfast that Saffi and Faro would have loved: a machine that made tiny pancakes by simply pushing an ‘OK’ button, a dish full of whipped cream that was constantly being refilled, a syrup dripper and all the other things that they like for breakfast.  

On the website the hotel did not look attractive so I had reserved an hotel at the Capetown waterfront, but the logistics of dropping off cars and getting ready for winter made an airport hotel a better choice. The hotel surpassed my expectations. The young gentleman at the reception desk, after I mentioned my web impression, said he would tell the marketing people, implying that they don’t do their job (“they are just walking around”). Maybe they should talk with their guests.

The hotel is super sustainable-economy conscious, even the salt and pepper shakers (made from 100% recycled plastics, refillable, and recyclable again). The toilets flush with grey water, the bathtub has a sign that says that filling a bath would deprive society of 320 glasses of water which made me wonder why they even bothered to put in a bathtub, you get points for using fewer pillows and towels.

Now the work begins. I turned my vacation setting off and started to prepare for the next 10 days of work that involve both individual coaching, team coaching and who knows what other surprises await me. It will also be a time to reconnect with old friends, people I haven’t seen since my last trip three and a half years ago, when I made three trips here in 2019, the last one in November 2019 with Axel.

I landed in Jo’burg early afternoon and got my first chance to use my new Chinese smartphone which I bought in a mall in Noordhoek for 50 USD. It is rather slow and I should probably have bought the 10 USD flip phone because I only want the phone for local calls so people don’t have to call the US to reach me.

Of course I hadn’t fixed the settings. I had to get re-adjusted to using an Android phone. The driver Larry was calling me and looking for me but I didn’t hear the call. When I finally managed to call him he was standing right in back of me.

Load shedding, the turning off of the power grid was bad enough in Capetown (stage 2, which means two hours of no electricity several times per 24 hours), but here in the Jo’burg and Pretoria area it is worse: stage 6, meaning no electricity for 6 hours on end.

I observed the drivers navigate traffic light not working for hours because of load shedding. Pretoria is a big city. It is amazing how people manage. They are polite to each other and let some lanes go first and then ease into traffic and others stop. I tried to imagine big cities in the US without traffic lights and wonder whether people would be this gentle with each other.

And all this load shedding in a country that has tons of natural energy resources: wind, sun and water. When I ask why these free resources are not used. People don’t want me to ask that question because it is all about fraud, people at high places skimming off monies from all the subsidies. There is an area here where most of the embassies and senior government officials live. It is heavily guarded and you have to pass through a gate. In this area, I am told, there is no load shedding. Go figure.