Friday we had to deal with some administrative things such as banking, a cell phone, driving license, and paperwork for our things to clear customs. The horror, the horror!

Customs took longer than expected, and then we had to leave Johan’s passport for awhile, for the customs broker to take to the officials.

We went to the supposedly designated place for my license only to be told we had to go to another location, for which a patron had to explain the location. There I found a pleasant officer who was able to work through the situation to conclude I had to go back to the first place. My fault entirely, as I was giving a half-hearted attempt at converting my expired American license into a usable South African one. But I needed photographs of myself, which I didn’t have on hand.

The part of town for the first license place is not very comfortable. It’s the oldest part, and it’s where blacks do their shopping. With so much talk about security/safety, it’s not easy for a pair of whites like ourselves to be comfortable down there. This is a shame, as it’s so typically part of the urban rot you see in America.

We want very much to go around with our cameras clicking, in old East London. It’s African! There is color and character there. And these fears lie at the heart of bigotry, so they are a good thing to resist. Besides, there is a whole ‘nother culture (cultures?) there, which surely has something with which to enrich us further.

But without the needed photos we returned to the customs broker and collected Johan’s passport (for which we had to wait awhile). Then over to a place where we expected to get me a cell phone without a lot of hassle, as this was arranged with the rep. that handles the company cell phones.

Of course this wasn’t hassle free. The person Johan spoke with wasn’t there and the deal wasn’t as described when Johan phoned. The woman who talked with us didn’t have answers to the more complicated questions. But the other woman would be back latter, so we headed for some shopping and lunch.

Shopping was pleasant and successful, amazingly. Almost everything we wanted to get was available. We had lunch at a place we already knew from our previous trip here. Then back to the cellular place.

This time the rep. was there, but “very busy”, so we still had to deal with the other one who lacked answers, and now it was explained that the busy one had read prices from the wrong column. Yes, it smells of bait-and-switch. Yet they were helping us run around some of the typical hassles of being new in town. Ended up ordering a very lovely Pocket PC phone. They didn’t offer a Treo (Palm OS), which I already have had.

At least after all the red tape we managed to have our first walk over the dune to the beach, here by our temporary place. It’s beautiful!

East London Beach