Marlborough Man

Pretoria

A lazy morning packing, a walk in the sun, and then off to the airport to return to Johannesburg.

The man next to me was an engineering manager for Marlborough tobacco.  We had a great conversation while he explained to be the problems of untaxed tobacco and how it gets into South Africa.  Apparently bad guys set up small factories in containers, and then set up somewhere and make cigarettes.  If the authorities are getting too close they just load the container-factory on the back of a truck and take it somewhere else.

He told me that their biggest selling product in South Africa is pipe tobacco, which surprised me because while I’ve seen lots of people smoking, I haven’t seen any smoking pipes.  He explained that it is mostly purchased by poor people who roll it in newspaper to smoke it.  Their second best selling product is snuff…mostly used by women whose husbands don’t want them to smoke.

He was on his way to Turkey to take over the management of a factory that the company had just purchased.  The strangest thing of all, however, was that he looked like a Marlborough man – and I didn’t have the nerve to ask him if that was a bona fide employment condition.

When we arrived at the airport, three of us walked out together, Helena, Buhle (both African)  and me.  Even though we were walking closely, the taxi touts singled me out to pursue…obviously even if equality is the law here, there are still some things colour related.  I wondered how back women get taxis here, and Helena said they have to yell at them.

Finally at Buhle’s house of the night – we set off tomorrow for a week’s travel in Zimbabwe. It will be fun, once we get over the shock of starting off at 5 am.  Apparently we have to leave that early in order to get to the border before the immigration people knock off for lunch, in order to be sure to get through the border.   A new adventure awaits!