speaking of numbers …long ago at the entrance to the Weskus Nasionale Park
Oh that gets dealt with. The call that gave us the English word “loo” was hijacked by the French and transformed into something that translates as “the English place”.
The book looks at the problem of what to do with our waste from many different angles.
Ronnie Kasrils gets a mention because he is one of the few ministers of water and sanitation who had a serious go at the sanitation end (water nearly always gets nearly all the budget). This in a chapter about South Africa and sanitation in rural schools. There was a guy who took on this challenge in the E Cape. He hooked up with Kasrils. Then they just happen to be at Robben Island the same day as the P̶M̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶T̶h̶a̶i̶l̶a̶n̶d̶.̶ President of Singapore. T̶h̶e̶ ̶P̶M̶ ̶ The President hears part of the conversation and asks for a word. He’s interested because Singapore (like many countries in the East) has pooh problems it needs to sort out, and a shortage of people willing to do the work. H̶a̶l̶f̶ ̶a̶n̶ ̶h̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶l̶a̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶d̶u̶d̶e̶ ̶h̶a̶s̶ ̶a̶ ̶j̶o̶b̶ ̶o̶f̶f̶e̶r̶ ̶a̶t̶ ̶a̶ ̶g̶o̶o̶d̶ ̶s̶a̶l̶a̶r̶y̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶c̶i̶t̶i̶z̶e̶n̶s̶h̶i̶p̶ ̶t̶h̶r̶o̶w̶n̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶b̶e̶c̶a̶u̶s̶e̶ ̶T̶h̶a̶i̶l̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶t̶r̶y̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶i̶m̶p̶r̶o̶v̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶i̶r̶ ̶s̶a̶n̶i̶t̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶P̶M̶ ̶d̶e̶c̶i̶d̶e̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶g̶u̶y̶ ̶w̶h̶o̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶ ̶d̶o̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶j̶o̶b̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶n̶o̶b̶o̶d̶y̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶T̶h̶a̶i̶l̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶w̶a̶n̶t̶s̶ ̶b̶e̶c̶a̶u̶s̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶t̶a̶b̶o̶o̶s̶ ̶a̶t̶t̶a̶c̶h̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶i̶t̶.̶
The end of the story is that the local guy eventually is contacted by the Malaysian Government who are looking for somebody to keep the toilets clean. They offer him a contract and citizenship.
The chapter I’m reading now is about the lowest of low castes in India. You guessed right. They take it away. Having first scraped it up by hand. The system was still in place when the book was written (2008). It’s nearly exclusively a woman’s job, and these women suffer terribly and nearly constantly from diseases they get by virtue of their vocation.
1 Like
Aaah the French. So a Francophile is someone who admires the French, right? But an Anglophile, spelled exactly the same in French is “Qui a ou marque de la sympathie pour les Anglais”, that is, someone who has sympathy for the English.
they say it is safer to speak Afrikaans in the rural areas of France than English 
reminds me of a story my granny once told me about the elderly British couple who decided to visit some small historic place in the South of France [late 1940’s] - they were told of the problems the French have with sanitary amenities so they wrote a letter to the major there asking about the situation with the WC. The major called a council meeting because his English was not up to scratch and they in the end decided that WC must stand for Wesleyan Church, so they drafted a letter to the couple stating inter alia that …
“… yes, indeed, there is one available but it is about 10km out of town… it is open between 12:00 and 16:00 during weekdays and Sundays from 09:00 to 13:00…
it seats about 40 people… the acoustic is very good”
Edit
WC = Water Closet
It is safer to speak ANY language other than English in France. The other guy will respond with “quoi!?” and then you switch to English. The objective of the exercise is to make it clear that you are not British. Or American, which is much worse.
Water Closet right?
1 Like
Right. Even the Germans call it a WC, although using the German letter names. Useful if you ever travel in those parts. Alternatively, you can use the word “Klo” which is quite close to Loo.
reminds me of an old German cabaret artist who, in a slightly tipsy state, lamented the situation on the French Riviera, to wit the Côte d’Azur… here the phonetics are important as it is pronounced “koht” + “duh” + “zyoor” - the German for the nagemmer contents is Kot 
I was in Europe this year and I’ve noticed that Americans have become very quiet.
This was probably inevitable when the WW2 veterans disappeared and the US tourists didn’t feel invincible any longer.
9/11 also made them realize how they weren’t everybody’s pal.
I have family in Spain. I figured out early on that if you just learn to say “hola”, “gracias”, “por favor” and “buenos” (short hand for “good morning/afternoon/evening”) a lot of doors start opening. You’re making an effort to be polite.
It’s a tricky dance. A lot of people in urban Spain speak some amount of English, even if you and they can’t converse about Rory McIlroy’s swing. And a lot of tourists are rude.
My step son lives in Alicante which is a on the Costa Blanca, not far from the dreaded Benidorm, where the English go in numbers and many have time share. His father-in-law was very keen that we should see the best of the area and told us he wanted to take us out for a slap up meal. The restaurant was in Benidorm. I hoped he wasn’t trying to please us by giving us the Spanish idea of a British meal (fried everything). And it was just like what you thought was TV show caricature: Sunburned English people dressed in union jack tee shirts all complaning loudly about how the idiot dagos have used olive oil to fry the eggs UH-GAIN. I’m pretty sure that the dago waiter had a fairly good idea of what was being said. Our host turned off the main drag, ducked down a couple of alley ways and suddenly were in a part of Benidorm where the tourists don’t go, and enjoyed a delicious meal.
I recall catching the tram into the old city center of Alicante. For some reason you could pay with a card on the inbound trip, but on the return journey you had to buy a ticket. So I stand in the queue.
The guy in front of me walks up to the window and says one word: “English?”. The woman on the other side shrugs. He walks off muttering about “wogs”. Now it’s my turn. I summons up nearly my entire pidgen Spanish vocabulary.
“Hola! Buenos. Mi turista. No espanol.”
She holds her thumb and finger a little distance apart and says “Hola! Leetle beet Eenglish”.
And we conduct our business quite pleasantly. I say “gracias”. She says “di nada”.
So there’s a tension that arises. Alicante needs the tourist money, but do the tourists have to be so rude? And the tourists are losing out. If they just opened up a little bit they would have a much more interesting time of it, eat better and spend less for it.
The other thing that makes a big difference these days is your smart phone. That translate app that comes on Android phones these days is really useful. I learned to use it to scan and translate menus in restaurants (having found what you want, you show the option to the waiter and, of course, say “por favor”). Also if you want to go to, say, the Palacio Real, it will give you detailed directions: Walk 150m to the metro (Madrid has wonderful public transport), Go to platform 4, Catch the eastbound train, Four steps. Up to street level. Catch the number 23 bus and go 6 stops. Etc.
It will also tell you how busy your destination is and how long you can expect to queue.
And then when you find all the signage is in Spanish, the app will use the camera to translate everything into English.
So if you’re going to Spain, learn those few magic words, get a power bank, and get a PAYG data sim for your phone or download the area maps and the Spanish dictionary before you leave.
1 Like
I think Saffers don’t normally exhibit this type of arrogance. We have to communicate with fellow South Africans with body language, finger counting and pointing in the relevant direction…
I was in London decades ago when they still had Bobbys on the street. I asked one if he had the time and he replied “yes”. Of course I was meant to assume he had a watch and simply had to ask the direct question. I don’t miss the Bobby 
There’s trouble waiting when you have the option of using a language that you think nobody around you understands. This is not confined to South Africans I’m sure. See my earlier comments about English tourists in Benidorm complaining about the grub.
I first ran into this phenomenom some years ago in Bath. I was walking down some side street, and a person comes the other way, talking loudly on his cell phone. As he gets close to me I hear him say “se vir die v----ing p–s sy v----ing g-t!” I said “sies!”. He nearly dropped the phone.
A couple of years later we had arrived in London and had to get the tube to the hotel. The train was very full. A German couple also got on the train and were having a hard time figuring out where they should get off. I showed them how the tube maps worked and they relaxed and thanked me.
A couple of stops later a seat became available. So I say to them “Ma’am, there’s a seat here”. They said oh nein nein nein! We had been helpful to them and so my wife should sit. They were elderly. I didn’t want to flog a dead horse, but I did say to the husband that we’d feel more comfortable if his wife took the chair.
Then something caught my ear above the hubbub of a full tube coach. Somebody said “nou begin a ding!”. Anyway, my wife eventually got the seat, but a group of saffers on the train continued to discuss the incident in Afrikaans. They didn’t use any foul language. When we got to our stop I waved at them and said “lekker dag.” Their faces nearly hit the floor.
South Africans get away with murder on social media because the moderators don’t understand Afrikaans swear words (let alone isiZulu). Though maybe AI is starting to learn. Yesterday on X I saw a complaint from somebody who had a post deleted for, he said, using a foul Afrikaans words beginning with a p, even though the person he was replying to clearly was such.
Completely understandable in some ways. If I go to Durban, and one of the locals say “Hey, howzit man!”, I may well reply… alright alright, and how’s it with you? Of course he will then look at me quizzically, since he was just saying hello.
Oh yes. No doubt about that. But the translation tools are getting VERY good. I am amazed at how often it even gets idiomatic expressions right, and it might even use the equivalent expression in the target language too!
Overall I do agree with Richard though, Saffers do tend to be nice people for the most part. A story I always tell, of why I love this place: I get off a 12-hour flight from Amsterdam. It is almost 10PM, the queues are long at immigration, and as we get to the front there are two guys waiting for the next available official, and at that point an older white guy points to the other guy (who is an older black gentleman) and he says: Madala, you go first.
That summarised the entire attitude of saffers for me. After 12 hours on a plane, he showed respect and let the other guy go first, and in his own language too.