Jay and Tigris’ trip to Durban

‘The ANC is a typical terrorist organization. Anyone who thinks it is going to run the government in South Africa is living in cloud­cuckoo land.’ — Former British PM Margaret Thatcher, 1987, quoted in the Ottawa Citizen, 1996.07.13

‘I make my own bed every day. I don’t allow the ladies who look after me to do it, I make my own bed. I can cook a decent meal ... I can polish a floor. Why can’t you do it?’ — Nelson Mandela, 1994.03.20

In March of 1996, my housemate Tigris and I visited friends of mine in Durban, South Africa. I’m going to write up some notes from that trip, but I haven’t done that yet. In the meantime, here are some pictures I’ve finally gotten around to scanning.

All images are 400x300 JPEGs unless otherwise noted. They were all scanned with a hand scanner that was not great by 21st-century standards, so I may re-scan them at some point.

Image index

• Here’s an index page with thumbnails of all the pictures linked to from this page, if you’d rather browse them that way.

Sea World, Durban

• A swimming penguin by the name of Pepper, taken through a window in the tank. (You can see my reflection and Tigris’ in the glass.)
• Another view of Pepper

A recreated traditional Zulu village

• Tigris being sized up as a possible fifth wife by the Zulu ‘chief’

A worker hostel in (Elizabeth?) township near Durban

• A hostel building, with other township buildings in the background
• A corridor in the hostel (200x300 JPEG)

Umfolozi-Hluhluwe game preserve

• Impala (and detail from the same picture, 320x240 JPEG)
• A group of kudu
• A zebra by the roadside
• Tigris looking at a couple of zebra
• More zebra
• Still more zebra
• Tigris at a water hole (200x300 JPEG)
• Driving hazards

Zulu countryside

• These buildings are typical Zulu construction — we saw lots of the round huts with thatched, pointed roofs, sprinkled with rectangular one­storey buildings with slightly slanted tin roofs. Once in a while, a much more elaborate house would appear in the middle of the tiny huts — under apartheid, affluent blacks were no more able to live in whites­only areas than poor ones, so they built their houses in the townships too.