JOHANNESBURG – It is 16 days into the 2010 World Cup adventure and some things have become self-evident.
The first is that the people of South Africa are marvelous, friendly individuals who will go out of their way to help you if they can.
The second thing is there are a whack of things you see that you don’t understand and probably will never be properly explained.
And if you do get an explanation, it might change depending on who you talk to or what part of the country you are in.
Let’s start with this – if you drive, you need to know about the robots. That’s what South Africans call traffic lights.
Why?
No one is quite sure. Some say it’s because the lights were the first form of robotic equipment in South Africa. The other explanation is that the lights took the place of the traffic police and since the lights didn’t move, they became robots.
One other thing about robots: they are more of a guide than a hard and fast rule. When there is no traffic, especially at night, red means slow down. You don’t stop because that makes you harder to hit.
And if you happen to be driving and see a rather large grass fire, don’t panic.
Grass fires appear indigenous to South Africa. You can find them anywhere grass grows.
No one seems very bothered by it. You drive along, see a wall of flame, ignore everything that you would normally make you scream, and continue through the smoke and ash.
The fires are somewhat disconcerting, though, when you are traveling along a highway and walls of flames are five feet from the asphalt, 20 feet from telephone poles and 100 feet from businesses.
“We do it for safety purposes, otherwise the grass continues to grow and then when it burns it’s really dangerous,” said one South African. “When it burns, the new grass grows. It’s perfectly safe”.
One night, on a return journey from the city of Nelspruit (about four hours from Johannesburg), eight grass fires were burning. None was watching over the fire.
