The Drive Back to Pretoria

I made it back to Pretoria. I woke up early enough to make it back in one day. It was a nice 15 hours to jam to home-made cds and sit in my own thoughts (Highly recommended by the way).

One thing I kept thinking about was how familiar this place was. For the first half of the drive I kept thinking that I had been here before and completely chalked it up to the fact that I had made a very similar drive, slightly different route, but very similar when Will and I drove down almost two weeks ago. But about half-way through the drive I started thinking my familiarity with this country was a lot deeper than one drive two weeks ago.

The grand conclusion for the drive was that this place is America all over again. Sounds crazy but that is what I have decided. Cape Town is like San Francisco, Johannesburg is Detroit. The people are obsessed with sports, almost as obsessed with sports as they are with TV. We call ourselves the melting pot bu there they have 11 national languages. They all speak English but make fun of eachother for their different accents. They have a government run by a black majority, which all the white people think is corrupt, like Memphis. Fruit grows down around the coast (California), and for hundreds of miles in the middle of the country all you see is cows and corn (Nebraska).

The only differences I could think of are that they all sing a lot better than any of us, they say howzit instead of whatzup (both equally indifferent to the response), and they drive on the left side of the road...which was contantly on my mind Thursday. That's about it.

Maybe we aren't so special over in America after all. But you still gotta love the good old Red White and Blue. There is no place like it (I recognize the contradiction). I'm coming home tomorrow. Flight leaves at 8:20 pm South African time, 1:20 pm Memphis time. I'm really ready. It has been a great experince, and Will and I learned a ton, but I'm ready to be home. Love to talk about the trip with you so just ask, or call, or make a lunch appointment.

This won't be the last post. I plan on reading back through my journal and trying to summarize some stuff, so stay tuned for a long one.