UPE used to be almost exclusively Afrikaner. Only over the last four years or so the student body has changed to become more racially representative of the greater population. Scott says it's come the furthest of any institution in South Africa in this respect, since the other originally white universities have retained more of their Afrikaner base. It's very strange, huge empty parking lots for a student body where everyone used to have cars, and now most students take public transpo to school. Scott tells of one young woman who took the bus from the Transkei and arrived by taxi late at night, ready to start her first year at university.

Downtown PE, where Scott works, is gorgeous, in a kind of Charleston, South Carolina, or Bermuda way. Each building is painted a different pastel color, and many are former mansions. I guess it's a war zone at night though. I'll be exploring more with Becky when we pick the kids up from school, go to Charlie's tennis lesson, and otherwise recreate, if I'm still awake.


I got to go behind the walls. Paul, the SMATE (Science, Math, and Technology Education) department chair, which is Scott's department, had moved into a new house. We brought him a bottle of wine and he showed us round. He lives in the Summerstrand suburban canyon gerbil maze developments. We had some trouble finding his house, and it was quite eerie driving around in the twilight trying to distinguish the houses, since you couldn't actually see the houses, only the barricades and the prominent security system emblems. I saw only one house that did not have some sort of six-foot wall the entire length of the lot. Brick, steel, occasionally part vegetation, some beautiful, most imposing, all with large signs proclaiming the security system in use. Looking down the street there were no pedestrians, no children, no dogs, no cars, just a canyon of walls.

At the bookstore I saw a Home and Garden magazine with a cover line "Beautiful Walls and Barricades." Martha Stewart decorates a prison.

Behind the walls are very comfortable nice suburban houses. Most have huge doorways opening into spotless gardens. Paul's house went on and on. It included a mother-in-law apartment that will actually house a mother-in-law, and an apartment for his live-in man, who does household chores. The canyon developments are not exclusively white; there are some black families. All who live there are definitely paying for insulation. Because of this insulation, wealthy South Africans are even more car-dependent than Americans. Poorer South Africans walk, or take taxis, which are overcrowded toyota minivans driven by homocidal maniacs.

There are gardeners everywhere. Every morning at the university a team would come through and sweep up the leaves that had fallen the night before and tidy up the beds. Gardening's big, lawns are immaculate, and in the tropical climate bougainvillea and even humble impatiens can take over structures. Labor is so cheap and overavailable that any tiny corner of the moneyed world is snipped and polished, by hand. I was boggled by the teams of (dark-skinned) municipal street cleaners in Paris with their big loud green machines, and landscapers in the States blowing grass and leaves around. Why don't they just rake things and pick them up?

Keeping in the suburban car theme, we picked up Dory and Charlie at school. It was fancy-dress day for Dory, which means they wear costumes (two mermaids, two fairy princesses, the usual). Charlie's class went to the beach, so they didn't have to wear their uniforms. The classes are mixed races, mostly white but with a definite sprinkling of black and other-colored kids thrown in. Charlie's best buddy is the girl next-door, Biftu, who is from Ethiopia. She's a fun and very self-composed little girl who speaks the King's English. Dory is picking up quite the English accent, it's hard not to giggle as she explains the finer points of the Pokeman hierarchy. In Charlie's school there are separate classes taught in Afrikans, available through high school, which strikes me as really weird.

The white suburban teenagers I saw are really into surfing and rugby. Since the beach is sight, most young men are always dressed to hang ten. And the tassies (surfer bettys) wear huge sneakers the size of rugby balls and talk on cell phones like totally all the time.

We went out for Thai food with the other Fulbright folks, Bob and Sue from Seattle and Joelle from San Francisco. Bob is working with high-school kids and Joelle is working with elementary school kids in a coloured township. Bob described a trip that some of his high-school kids took to a black township. He said he didn't even know how to begin to process the contrast between the white upper-crust (and very intelligent, well-informed, and thoughtful) 17-year old girls he taught and the township kids they were visiting.

The big topic of conversation among whites these days (other than crime) is whether to emigrate. The papers are full of ads for emigration services. Bob asked his students about this, and most said that they wanted to stay in South Africa, despite the uncertainty and difficulties ahead. They would only leave the country if they thought their lives were in danger. Pretty startling talk to hear coming from teen-age girls. I felt like I'm just looking through a keyhole, seeing a tiny portion of the big picture, a feeling I eventually accepted as a given.

After our second road trip, which was particularly muddy, Becky and I brought the Honda in to be washed at the gas station. For less than 20 Rand (two bucks) we got coffee, a muffin, and a forty-minute wash and detail, inside and out, by hand by two men. All the gas stations are full-serve, with a slew of attendants running around spicking and spanning your car. They bring windscreen washing to a high art. When they're not actively waiting on a customer, they hang around looking neat and courteous and, it later occurred to me, smoking.

Another indication of the labor surplus is that there are no parking meters. We took Charlie to his tennis lesson, and I noticed that Becky greeted a young man standing in the street. She explained to me that he was the car guy. Car guys (my term) patrol a specific block, or parking lot, and keep an eye on your car. I have no idea what or whom they're protecting your car from, or what they would do if someone tried to actually do anything. They're just an extra set of eyes. Some people think of it as extortion, some as a necessary service. Some of the car guys wear semi-official uniforms, even reflective stuff, although they can also freelance in plainclothes. They're low-pressure, but if you parked somewhere regularly I imagine it would be wise to develop a good relationship with that block's car guy.