Mzoo Spot

A detailed account of my 2005 visit to Kenya was never published, and its draft was unfortunately lost when two of my laptops were stolen on separate occasions. This is an attempt to document that very memorable trip. In what seemed like a random act from my boss’ side, I was selected to attend a Statistics in Applied Climatology (SIAC) course in Nairobi, Kenya. I was naturally excited as this was going to be my first time visit to a country very far outside the borders of South Africa. This meant having to apply for an official visa, getting the mandatory yellow fever vaccination, and packing malaria tablets. South Africans staying for a month in Kenya did not need a visa, but we did it anyway. Our travel agent booked us (my colleague and I) on Kenya Airways (KA). Things started on a bad note when a serious fault was spotted (hydraulic pump, or something like that malfunctioned), as we were about to depart. Technicians were summoned, but they would take the whole day to fix ...

Out of the blue I decided I should write about the time I spent at Soweto-on-Sea, Port Elizabeth, between 1991-1992. After spending just a year (1990) at Nomzamo High School in Port Alfred I decided to go and study in PE. It is not quite clear to me now as to why I took this decision, but part of it was motivated by two things: the fact that Nomzamo High was a school in shambles, and that my sister had completed her high school in PE a few years earlier. After passing my standard six, I moved to PE with a hope of getting a place at Kwazakhele High School, my sister school. I was going to live with relatives in Soweto. Soweto of 1991 was a particularly bad place. The place had no infrastructure to speak of; no sanitation; no real roads; no real houses; no schools; it was simply a dump of a place. Yet, Soweto was brimming with life. I was an active soccer player then, I joined Sea Robbers Football Club. So passionate were its fans, that they even placed a boulder at the area's popula...