17 March, Cape Town

Yesterday was the carnival in Cape Town. Tom, Tamara and myself had no idea what to expect but Lisa did. In preparation the street in front of our apartment was closed and I had to drop our car, which does not fit in the parking garage, around the corner. Then, in half a day, fences were put down aa well as grandstands. We had a first class view!

It started out very sloppy and the comments about that in South Africa apparently do not know what carnival is were frequent, but I have to say that it became very festive with one car after another and a lot of music. At 11 o’clock it was over and now, 7 o’clock in the morning, everything is cleared up.

Last week I had my first Uber experience. For those who do not know this phenomenon, Uber is a taxi service where you control everything via the Internet. It is therefore fast and surprisingly inexpensive. Creating an account for me was easy but, according to Uber, they couldn’t verify my payment method so all my rides are paid through Tom’s Paypal account which he then charged to me neatly (+ 20%?). After having taken this hurdle, it worked stunningly well and especially fast.

We are now more than 5 months away from the Netherlands, although we are well aware of what is happening there, via WhatsApp, FaceTime and Internet. The horrible events in New Zealand, for example, where one uses the, for me unknown, term repopulation to commit massmurder. Or the Brexit circus which, in my opinion, is to be seen as the biggest crime of the last decade. Yesterday, messages came out about the tropical storm in Mozambique, Malawi and Zambia, which has already cost hundreds of people life. We drove there several months ago and know or visited such places as Beira, Blantyre, Tete and Chimoio.

And there was, of course, local, Dutch news about Sylvie, Raymond and Andre or about the climate agreement. Here in Africa, at certain points, people are very far with energy savings. Solar water heaters and solarpanels can be found almost on every roof while wind energy is still in its infancy. For electricity generation, coal is inconceivably important and, still, new plants are being built and new mines are being put into use. Public transport is almost non existing and everything goes with taxi (vans). Thousands of kilometers of railway lines are unused. The air pollution around Cape of Good Hope is clearly visible and worrying. 

Simple measures will have a lot of effect here.