The Safair flight that carried me to Port
Elizabeth was not even a third full.
Beside me sat a friendly man and we struck up a conversation. Arriving at Port Elizabeth, I was met with a
thorough annoyance. To enjoy a 25%
discount, while buying the Safair ticket, I'd also reserved a vehicle with 1st
Car. After going through the rental
agreement and getting the price, the company refused to give me a vehicle
because my credit card is not embossed. I'd
never heard such insanity, and I said as much.
They insisted they needed to take an impression of the numbers and that
there was nothing else they could do.
Irked, I tried at Bidvest (that company of swift ascendance) and at
Europecar. The response was the same
each time. Seeing the last leg of my
trip crumble, I finally acquiesced and called my brother Kevin. He was in a meeting but came immediately
after. I asked if he would put the car
on his credit card and accept cash from me.
He agreed and transferred funds to facilitate this. I then opted to go to Avis because I did not
wish to give my business to those unwelcoming enterprises. Just before paying, I asked if they'd accept
my card. The clever receptionist took a
photocopy of it and allowed the transaction.
Boy, was I glad I hadn't returned to the others. Not only that, but this car was cheaper than at
1st Car, even after their "25% discount".
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Kevin followed me to Africa Beach B&B in
Summerstrand, where I dropped my bags in the room on the lovely grounds. Then, in the rain, we retired to his home in
Bluewater Bay, stopping en route to get dinner.
It was great to see Kevin's wife Wayonette, daughter Jayde (who'd now
grown into a young woman, off to college next year), and mother-in-law
Stella. They all looked well and happy,
although Stella had not completely recovered from the loss of her husband a
couple of years earlier. I cannot stand
this fact of life - death is so frightfully final and certain.
On Friday morning, I awoke two minutes after
the end of breakfast. Never mind, I'd
slept well. I slowly got ready and then
lunched at the Beach Hotel, where I'd hoped to stay - way beyond my
budget! I scoffed down a delicious
chicken schnitzel and seasonal veg.
Kevin joined me there, tardy in the vein of Quintin. Next we drove to my alma mater, which also
lies in Summerstrand. It was when I
studied here that I first met Nienke with whom I'd eaten in Cape Town last
week. I read at the Music Department of
the University of Port Elizabeth and she was in the Ceramics Department at the
Port Elizabeth Technikon. These two
institutions have since amalgamated and been renamed Nelson Mandela
Metropolitan University, which includes the following institutions previously
absorbed by either the university or the technikon: the Port
Elizabeth campus of Vista University, Saasveld Forestry College, Port Elizabeth
Teachers' Training College and Algoa College of Education.
I'd come today to see Professor Zelda
Potgieter, who'd been my mentor when I'd written my treatise many years
earlier. I'd always found her personable
and an inspiration, so I looked her up in 2010 and again now in 2015. This time I came bearing a gift of Chinese
classical music on CD. She was
unfortunately in a hurry, so we spoke for only a few minutes, but it was good
to see her. She is the only other
musician I know who is like me in this respect: although we both adore music,
neither of us has any desire to perform and we both acknowledge our mediocrity
at playing. Most people think that makes
one less of a musician, but I cannot agree.
Musicology is very much a respected field, and what is a scholar if not
someone who immerses himself in the theory and science of his subject?
Next on my agenda was picking up a list of
South African goodies from various supermarkets at the request of compatriots
in Taiwan.
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I went into a Checkers. Here people ambled obstructively and I got
rather peeved, which is so silly. Then I
kicked the bucket - which was standing low on the floor right beside the
shelves at which I was staring intently, and I nearly fell to the ground. A metre to my right, a man took a stick of
deodorant from the shelf, opened it, applied some to his armpit, closed it and
replaced it on the shelf. This was the
last straw, and I fled Checkers in search of a Pick 'n Pay or Spar.
I did eventually get all the goodies, and now I
had to work out how to get them back to Taiwan - my baggage would certainly be
overweight. I popped into the trusty
Post Net. Their international shipping
came with two choices. Either I sent the
box by courier, which meant by air, at a cost of R3180 for 5kgs, or I could
ship by boat, which meant that the package would be handled by the undependable
Post Office. I had to get creative,
especially since I had 10kgs to ship. It
was then I remembered that Emirates, with whom I'd fly back to the East, allow
30kgs of check-in luggage. I got online
to check Mango's policy - I'd use their services from Port Elizabeth to
Johannesburg. As it happened, I could
buy extra baggage online before flying, at a cost of R250 for 10kgs. What a joy!
(When I checked in a few days later, the assistant told me that I'd been
smart - extra baggage on the day would have cost R450.) All that was left was to find a box. Cut to me popping into supermarkets and
bottle stores day after day until I found the perfect receptacle for my
purposes.
Saturday and Sunday were spent driving around
the city, reminiscing about happy student days and enjoying visions of friends
long since buried into sub conscience.
At times, I felt somewhat uneasy, as I had on Pretoria Main Road in
Johannesburg and on Greenmarket Square in Cape Town. I heard later that there had been angry
demonstrations in Walmer, through which I passed several times. I also had brunch with Tyrone, once again at
the Beach Hotel. He told me that his
brother had been unable to go to work during the demonstrations, as the masses
of people stomping past his house had resultantly confined him to the safety of
indoors. (Tyrone is the widower of Ron Whitehead. I met Ron many years earlier when I lived in Port Elizabeth. He was part of the gay network, and I came to rent a room in his gorgeous home in Mill Park for the duration of my final year in Port Elizabeth, 1993. Ron passed away from a ruptured aneurysm in 2009 or 2010.)
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The rest of the time was spent catching up with
Kevin and his family, either at their home or out and about. On Saturday,
we visited Bay West, a sprawling shopping complex just outside PE on the N2,
west of the city. Here were all kinds of expensive stores and an ice
rink. I was interested to notice that not one person on the ice was
black. Another interesting sight was the Bubble Tea Company - bubble tea
is a quintessentially Taiwanese concoction. We ate at the Spur and then
retired for the night. On Sunday we lunched at Grass Roof Cafe, which
also lies west of PE on the road to Seaview. The decor was lovely and our
waiter was both attractive and funny, flirtatious even with Wayonette and
Jayde. My choice of food, however, disappointed.
