Yesterday saw me sampling the good, the bad, and the ugly of travel in South Africa.
The Good: The Springbok game was all I could have hoped for. The Lions came out storming, compensating for their sins of last week by controlling the pack and taking the fight to a Springbok squad that seemed lackluster at best for most of the first hour of the game. But then magic happened. A few substitutions worked out well for Peter de Villiers where they failed him last week, they started controlling possession, two scintillating tries and sometimely kicking (which had failed the team for most of the game) left the game tied at 25 all in extra time and Morne Steyn set to take a 53.5 meter penalty kick. His blast was straight and true and South Africa was able to take some revenge on the Lions for the 1997 tour that the visitors won in a sport where memories are long. Next weekend’s game at Ellis Park (yes, yes, I know it’s now Coca Cola park, but that just strikes me as bordering on blasphemy) loses some of its luster, though the British and Irish Lions will be playing for pride and the Springboks looking to put an exclamation on what they hope will be a historic season. And if the game has lost some of its luster for the masses of tourists swarming these games, perhaps that means tickets will be easier to come by. SARU has basically priced locals out of the market with Loftus Versfeld,a shrine of highveld rugby, turned into a neutral site with the predominance of the red-clad masses from the Northern hemisphere.
The Bad: It oftentimes happens on these trips, but yesterday i hit something of a wall. I suppose it is to be expected. By the time this trip is done I will have spent nine of ten weeks away from home, living in three different time zones. I crashed big time last night, but by 4:00 this morning was wide awake. This may prove to be a blessing, as we are heading to Cape Town today where it would be very useful to be on at least somewhat less of a pure night owl’s schedule.
The Ugly: We watched the game at a cafe in Melville. It was not quite the climate that I had hoped for — it would have been nicer to have had masses of more passionate Springbok supporters — but my friend was feeling a bit unbder the weather and the cafe offered both great seating and the chance to get good food as well as beer and it simply became a default. About an hour before the game I crossed the street and walked up a block or two toward what really marks the far corner of 7th Street, the main drag in Melville, to grab a newspaper so I could read the previews of the game and see the day’s news. As I approached a crowd was gathered. A man was sprawled out on his back, his head bashed in, a pool of blood and muck stirred by his convulsions and revealing the damage to the back of the skull to be extensive, gruesome, indeed, I was not the only observer who feared that I was seeing a man die, nor do I know if he did. And if anyone saw what happened, they were not about to admit it. There may have been an accident. He may have collapsed. Or he may have been a victim of brutal violence in a crime beset by too much of it. Whatever it was, that scene reminded me of just how fleeting and capricious life can be and how even Melville, as protected from the worst of South Africa’s excesses as just about anyplace in South Africa, is not immune even if the neighborhood has innoculated itself with neighborhood watch programs and the posting of various semi-official parking security details on the streets.