We are finally here!

What a week it has been!  We left last Wednesday from DC and flew to ATL where we caught our flight to Johannesburg. The flight is 15 hours non-stop and I was dreading it.  However, Intelsat flew us Business Class, which made the flight go amazingly fast.  The seats recline fully, which made sleeping more comfortable.  Jonathan had a coach ticket and we gave him a really hard time about flying in back. But Delta put him in Business with us since Jon is a Diamond Medallion flyer.  We told him not to get too used to it, since he will fly home coach!

We arrived with 9 bags plus carry-ons!  I have never travelled with so much luggage before.  We checked into our hotel, unpacked a few things and crashed.  We slept until 2:00 Friday afternoon.  I don't think we realized how exhausted we were from packing up our rental house in Arlington and from making the trip over.  We are staying in Sandton, a suburb of Jo'burg, where Jon's office is located, in a new hotel/apartment building called the DaVinci.  It is incredibly modern, everything is black and white. It is attached to the Sandton City mall and Nelson Mandela Square.

Friday and Saturday we did very little except a little shopping and walking. We checked out Jon's new office, which is lovely. On Sunday, we rented a car and drove to Parys, a small town south of Jo'burg on the Vaal River.  We went white-water rafting for a 1/2 day with an experienced guide and it was incredible!  The guide is sending us a DVD of some of the photos so I will upload them when I get them.  This area of South Africa looks exactly like I thought it would.  Sweeping savannas with scrubby trees.  Jo'burg and the surrounding area is about 5,000 feet above sea level, so even though it is summer, it is almost cool with low humidity.  It rains almost every day, which makes the surroundings green but the humidity passes along with the rain.  In fact, very few homes have air conditioning here because the temps are so delightful.

Monday and today (Tuesday) have been all about house-hunting.  We have been traveling with our relocation agent, Desiree, and have covered suburbs from 12 km (7 1/2 miles) from Jon's office to within walking distance.  Homes here in the northern suburbs are probably the most exclusive in Jo'burg. I suppose now would be a good time to address the issue of the racial divide here. Apartheid ended legally in 1994, and while a new black middle class is rising and growing every day, there is still huge chasm between the two races.  By far the majority of service positions are filled by blacks.  Drivers, maids, security, retail, laborers....all black.  Most whites live in the northern suburbs of Jo'burg (where we are looking for a home) while the majority of blacks still live in townships like Soweto and Alexandra, where they are bused into the wealthier neighborhoods to work each day.

Real estate shopping has allowed us to see what life in South Africa has been like for many years.  Every home here is walled with electric fences, razor wire, and gated drives.  Some homes are "clustered" into compounds with gates and guards as well.  Every home has gates to lock bedroom wings from the rest of the house.  Newer homes have shatter-proof glass and closed circuit cameras and TV screens.  Each home has had a maid's quarters (with a separate entrance). Maids and gardeners are considered a must-have and come very cheaply-about 150 Rand per day (the equivalent of about $22.00 a day).   We looked at one particular home in the largest American compound in Jo'burg.  It has about 1200 homes and roughly 30% American expats.  The American School is very close to this particular neighborhood (called Deinfern) so many Americans choose to live there for the proximity to the school.  The realtor showed us a house that backed up to the outside wall of the compound.  She informed us that the wall was concrete with electric fence and razor wire, had a road on the other side that was patrolled by security in trucks 24 hours, and had another exterior electric fence that was buried a meter deep in concrete.  She then informed us quite proudly that there hadn't been a border breach in 7 years! 

I haven't really felt afraid at all and everyone has been very nice-both white and black.  Certainly there is a giant economic disparity between blacks and whites, even now.  The Oslers have a lot to learn about our new country and its people.