Spouse on the house

I have kept a souvenir from South Africa, that I find so funny. It is a beer coaster from the hotel I stayed at in Johannesburg. Ok, it was a cheap hotel by the airport where I only stayed for one night because the transfer to Kruger left too early to make the arrival from Cape Town the same day, but still the text on the coaster: “Free love on the weekend” makes you wonder what kind of hotel it actually was. On the rim of the coaster you can read: “Book a room from Friday to Sunday and qualify for our amazing Spouse-on-the-house rate”.

Have I actually spent a night in a Love Hotel?!? Should I regret I was only there on a Wednesday night? Maybe I would also have gotten a Spouse on the house if I had been there on a weekend?!

Reflections from South Africa (looking back)

Something that quite immediately struck me on arrival in Cape Town was that it did not really “feel like Africa”. Not that I have been that much to Africa before, but compared to Zimbabwe and Ethiopia where I have been, Cape Town felt very much less “African”. And as my friend probably quite correctly stated; you will probably see more black people in southern London than in central Cape Town. However I, honestly, don’t pay much attention to the colour of peoples skin and quite often I don’t even really “see” colour that way. But then all of a sudden something makes you aware of the fact that the colour of the skin can look different, and sometimes it is the strangest things. As for example when you meet a black person with a band aid. The band aid is supposed to be “skin-coloured” not to attract too much attention, but the “skin-colour” is the beige/pink of a Caucasian person, which really do catch attention on a black person. Then it struck me; I have never seen band aids developed for black people. Maybe there are some, just that I have never seen any. Or is our world really still so biased that it has never been developed?!