The Sunny Side

26/07/10

We have left Cape Town and flown to Durban. Durban is the sunny city, and hope to a large population of South African Indians. The streets have the same busy feel as the Indian area in Thailand. People have market stalls spilling out into the street and you never know who's got right of way on the road as people are walking everywhere with such force and conviction regardless of the oncoming traffic. We are in Durban to search for sardines. Now is Sardine Run time and they have a hotline for you to phone and get the latest updates as to where the sardines have been netted. We stopped at one beach because we saw a cars parked all over the place; double parked on the road, on grass verges, blocking others in in carparks. On the beach there were a hundred people or more crowded together in the shallow water, and more watching from further back on the beach. A net with thousands of sardines had been pulled into the shallows and fishermen were desperately trying to get them out of the net and into crates as fast as they could. The reason for the haste became obvious when I saw that all the people around the net weren't just spectators, they were there to grab any sardine they could get their hands on. They had buckets, shopping baskets, bags, strips of plastic, even handkerchiefs to wrap their loot. People weren't just grabbing the sardines dropped by the fishermen, they were trying to untie parts of the net, even slicing it open in parts. The crowd were 90% Indian, some black Africans, and a few whites. While I have no problem with the barefoot guy in ripped clothes and dirt all over him, trying to grab a good feed for the day. I do however, have a huge problem with BMW driving, gold laden, suit/sari wearing people, celebrating stealing bags full of sardines. I’m sure they all have businesses of their own and would feel quite put out if the fishermen walked in and helped themselves to their stock. The fishermen were working as hard at keeping the people away from the nets as they were at getting the fish into the crates. At one point the man in charge started hurling abuse and throwing sardines as hard as he could at people. This has become known as 'Sardine Fever', and is now a tradition that is accepted with remarkably good humour. Personally it all made me a little mad.

Now that we're on the warmer South Coast we're back in the tent. In Durban we stayed about 30km south at Blue Sky Mining at Warner Beach. Perched high up on a hill with rooms, kitchens and sitting areas spread over 4 houses, it's a spacious and sunny place to stay. We had planned on staying there for about a week, but while it's comfy and quiet, it's too far from the beach.