Little Essay on the South African social situation

Introduction

A few weeks ago I left South Africa as my visa was expiring, I am now writing this from Mozambique! More about that in future posts. This post is a bit different, I wanted to share a bit my impressions on the social situation in South Africa, so beware it's a lot of text, don't expect pictures here.

I loved my trip around South Africa, those three months have been incredible. It was the first time I took so much time to discover a country in a trip, and it really is a completely different experience. Besides the obvious advantage of having more time to see more places and enjoy them more, I found that the most interesting part was to really be able to properly experience and understand the culture there. When going on a short trip to a country, it is so easy to completely miss the actual cultural environment; not the one you see in museums, but the things you only get to learn by interacting with locals and going out of the touristy places. This is something I was fortunate enough to experience in South Africa, and I actually feel like I now got a decent global picture of the different aspects of South African culture, its struggles, history and aspirations. And I find it absolutely fascinating! South Africa really is a special country, because of its tragic history and the fragile balance between the different populations that compose the Rainbow Nation. You got a few hints here and there throughout my posts, but I thought I would try to introduce you a bit further to the situation in South Africa and what it is like to live there, in a dedicated post. Of course this understanding is mostly based on my encounters so it could be biased, but I do have the impression I have met quite a few different people there from different backgrounds. Feel free to react if you agree or disagree in the comments!

Kruger Park: The big Safari

After Pretoria, my next and last stop was Kruger, in the North East of South Africa. Last stop because unfortunately my visa was expiring after 3 months of travel in this wonderful country! The Kruger National Park is one of the biggest reserve for wild animals in Africa. It's huge... roughly a region of 65 x 360 km size. It's very famous and you get to see any african animal you can think of, including of course the Big Five: Lions, Leopards, Buffaloes, Elephants and Rhinos.

I found a nursery farm right next to the park to work in (with Workaway), where I stayed for about two weeks. The farm was nice, and I had free weekends to explore the surroundings with the other volunteers! We rented a car and went straight to Kruger.

In Kruger, like in most safari reserves, you pay to enter with your own car, and then you look for animals while driving on the numerous roads going through the park. It's quite touristy but the park is so big that you are alone most of the time!
I saw sooo many amazing animals in there... Let me show you some of the numerous pictures I took of them them!

 

The Kings

First of course, the lions... We saw some lions eating a buffalo right next to the road, it was crazy!

Look at that big cat!

A few days in Pretoria

After Lesotho, I went straight to Pretoria, the capital, by night bus. Pretoria isn't really a very interesting city by itself, but I went to visit a friend, Bryson, I had met in my hostel of Cape Town.
Bryson was very sweet and came to pick me up at the bus terminal (he showed up two hours late, of course, this is Africa!), and then took me a bit around the city.

Mandela statue in front of the Union building