Dodging Rocks
When our friends Rob and Tom were here a couple weeks ago, they had already seen all the rest of South Africa, which (I'm told) is much more African-seeming than here. We've mentioned this before, and mentioned that we're a little self-conscious about the fact that it feels like we're cheating by living in Cape Town.
So on their way out of town, as Katie and I were driving them down the highway to the airport in our ever-more-soggy tin can that passes as a car, I tried to revive our overseas credibility a bit by telling them about the local phenomenon that’s been in the newspapers a few times since we got here.
You see, there's this quirky little thing about that highway we were driving them down. It goes right through a massive "shacktown" of buildings made of corrugated tin and plywood, and the kids who live there have a habit of hanging out alongside the road and throwing large rocks at passing cars.
What fun! Watch them skid! Watch people get badly injured! Then run back into the township, where police admit they are too afraid to chase you!
According to one local paper, incidents of rock throwing are down something like 39 percent this year. That’s good news, right? Not in my book. Anything that can be measured in numbers that don’t round easily indicates to me that it happens a lot.
So whenever we drive down that road, we roll the windows up and hope they aim for the jerks in the Benz who are tailgating us. There are a lot of these crazy-with-their-sense-of-entitlement-driving Benz people, and judging from the stories in the newspaper, they're the preferred targets.
In our rusted, waterlogged golf cart, I think we're actually pretty safe.
So on their way out of town, as Katie and I were driving them down the highway to the airport in our ever-more-soggy tin can that passes as a car, I tried to revive our overseas credibility a bit by telling them about the local phenomenon that’s been in the newspapers a few times since we got here.
You see, there's this quirky little thing about that highway we were driving them down. It goes right through a massive "shacktown" of buildings made of corrugated tin and plywood, and the kids who live there have a habit of hanging out alongside the road and throwing large rocks at passing cars.
What fun! Watch them skid! Watch people get badly injured! Then run back into the township, where police admit they are too afraid to chase you!
According to one local paper, incidents of rock throwing are down something like 39 percent this year. That’s good news, right? Not in my book. Anything that can be measured in numbers that don’t round easily indicates to me that it happens a lot.
So whenever we drive down that road, we roll the windows up and hope they aim for the jerks in the Benz who are tailgating us. There are a lot of these crazy-with-their-sense-of-entitlement-driving Benz people, and judging from the stories in the newspaper, they're the preferred targets.
In our rusted, waterlogged golf cart, I think we're actually pretty safe.
posted by Erik at 9:44 am
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