I was extremely fearful that Valentine’s Day didn’t exist in
Cape Town, since it I thought it was a US, Hallmark holiday. However, I just read on Wikipedia that it has
been around forever and started when a couple Christian martyrs, both named
Valentine (or Valentinus) were executed for marrying Roman soldiers and
preaching in the name of Christ. That
was over 1500 years ago. Not a Hallmark
holiday after all, it seems.
Antique V-day card.
Like all men, I was anxiously awaiting Valentine’s Day. I couldn’t wait to think about how I was
going to show Rebecca how much I lover her.
Yeah right! Valentine’s Day
sucks. I have never liked it. Not only do flower shops decide to make
everything 300% its normal price, but also restaurants are kind enough to offer
expensive price fixe deals for you! How
nice! Considering how the holiday has
turned into an opportunity to pamper all the women out there and nothing to do
with Christianity, which is why the original martyrs were killed, they might be
upset if they saw what was happening!
All you women totally deserve
to be pampered, though. So don’t
misunderstand me. Men are oafs that
would probably not survive a week if it weren’t for the wonderful women in our
lives. So thank you all for keeping us
around! You are in sad shape if you are
a man and only showing your woman how much you love her one day a year! So I was soooo
happy when I saw all the Valentine’s Day displays in the stores here. It is alive and well in South Africa.
The really good news about the holiday is that it gave Sammi
and Chad an excuse to come over from Pretoria to hang out all weekend. They flew in afternoon and left Monday
afternoon. Rebecca was in class all day
so I tried my best to prepare the apartment for guests. The biggest challenge we had been avoiding
was to move the double beds from the guest room into the master bedroom, and
the queen (which is more like a wider-than-normal full size bed) from the
master bedroom into the guest room. The
two doubles pushed together turned out to be way roomier than the so-called
queen bed. I decided to tackle this
project myself. It took me about 2 hours
of sweating, slowing pulling around mattresses a few inches at a time while in
my wheelchair, screwing and unscrewing bed frames, but was finally and happily
able to get the job done! Rebecca came
home and said, “Chip??? How did you do this??? Did you get help?” Nope!
“Show me how you did this!” I
told her it would have to remain a mystery and she would have to consider me a
little less helpless! Definitely a good
feeling to do a man’s job again (not that women can’t do it – just that the man
should to save the woman the trouble!).
We went out to dinner at a nice Greek restaurant Friday
night with Sammi, Chad and a couple other friends. Saturday we drove out to
Stellenbosch to go wine tasting in the country.
It’s only about an hour from Cape Town.
The weather was incredible. The country
is even less hospitable to me than the city, so I just took my crutches and got
plenty of walking in. According to my
FitBit, I walked over 6,000 steps on Saturday, including 6 flights of steps and
quite a bit of standing around. We
stayed at a bed & breakfast Saturday night.
Sunday we started all over again driving around and tasting great food
and wine. We even met up with a tour
group consisting of some exchange students in Rebecca’s program from the
US. All in all a great and exhausting
weekend!
This is a pic of the countryside in the wine region here.
Now it’s Monday and I’m back to trying to find a job. I’ve been focusing more on that then writing
the book for the moment. However, I do
have a few chapters completed. The more
I look into the job market, the rougher it seems. They are still reeling with the aftereffects
of apartheid here, including things like not allowing foreigners to buy land
and further limiting how much business foreigners can do, what jobs they can
take, etc. Honestly that’s just the tip
of the iceberg. So starting a business
here right now seems like a terrible idea.
I had hoped to somehow get involved with the townships and shantytowns
and helping a non-profit educate or train those groups. But it seems that traveling to both the
non-profits and the townships are extremely difficult for me. For example, I went to one non-profit called
the Scalibrini Centre, which was down a commercial street. The sidewalks were far worse than the already
difficult main streets. 3 separate times
in the span of a block I had to get assistance from a passerby to make it over
a giant hole or over a steep slant to avoid from flipping over. Doing that on a daily basis seems ludicrous,
so I didn’t pursue that.
As a quick side topic - the general treatment of the
disabled here is somewhat of a double-edged sword. On one hand, people are often coming up to
offer assistance. They are all very nice
about that. On the other, the reason
they are offering assistance is because they consider me fairly helpless. They often comment how they are surprised
that I am out and about on my own. I see
other people in wheelchairs being pushed around the streets. And there are even “homes for the disabled”
here, where spinal cord injuries and other handicapped folks are just living
through life without hardly ever venturing outside. I've reached out to a few of them to get involved and encourage them to get out and be active. We'll see how it goes.
Back to the job scenario – it seems that Cape Town is largely
driven by real estate and tourism. There
are other jobs, but they are very specific and not really hiring. If they are
hiring, then I still don’t have a work permit.
Once I do, then they have to be able to justify to the government why I
am being hired over every other citizen in South Africa. Most of the jobs that fit my criteria are in
Johanessburg. There are scenarios where
it might make sense for me to go there and work while Rebecca stays in school
in Cape Town, but they don’t seem too appealing right now. On top of all this, the pay scale is quite a
bit different than the US. Admin
assistants here make a whopping 80,000 rand a year, or about $7,500. A YEAR!
That’s crazy. Management
positions pay $30-40k, even in larger, corporate positions.
So I’m strongly considering focusing on the book for now and
not getting down about the job market until I actually have my work visa. I should have that in another month or two! I also have a business idea I'm developing that takes up a little time.
Definitely a different world here! But we had a great weekend and I am going to
keep enjoying it as much as I can.
Dear
Lord, keep me positive. Please allow me
more weekends like this Valentine’s Day weekend. It was awesome! Fill me with the Holy Spirit. Guide my actions, thoughts, and
decisions. Use my life to accomplish
Your will. Help me to understand the
path You’d have me take. Thank you for
this great experience. Thank you for
Rebecca, for my great family, friends, and this life. And thanks for Tucky. In Your name, Amen.
Have a great week!
Chip
Chip
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