For dead bovine dinner, I can highly recommend South African outfit MooMoo. They serve a decent steak you see. They also allow you to choose your sides, sauces and such “so you get just what you want!” (It says here.) The menu is mouthwatering for a carnivore. And wine buffs. (If you are vegan, there’s a plant based joint next door. It’s empty. The meat is strong here in Pretoria: one senses a plant based diet being a concept met with macho derision.)
Discreetly tucked away at the end of the bar my field of vison shows the dining room is packed on a Tuesday night at 18.30. Conversation lively, waiters busy, bar staff beavering: the aroma of grilled flesh…
In short order a generous glass of Guardian Peak Merlot arrives. It is sooo good.
Not long after, a map-of-Africa-T-Bone-steak – scale 1-18ish – with pot of unctious biltong cheese sauce, crispy onion rings and – because the body is a temple – garden salad arrive.
Unlike some, I have zero issues with restauranting alone. Sometimes there’s conversation, sometimes – tonight – there is solitude and anonymity amongst the white noise. A chapter of the book is read, the food consumed, the bill presented, checked and paid.
Seventeen quid and twenty three pence (inc tip).
The trip home though…
The hotel is on the corner of a extra-urban highway junction in the FourWays area north of Jo’burg. MooMoo is diagonally opposite. It’s about 500M walk door-door. I guess you should know – if you didn’t already – that night-time (or daytime) strolls in these parts are ill advised. No, silly you, it’s not fear of snakes nor Wilderbeest. It’s powercuts, getting run over or attracting the attention of – as my local host describes succinctly – undesirables.
Walking to the restaurant was a cinch: dusk where you have good lines of sight.
Walking home… ay-yai-yai (as they say around here).
Firstly, the roadside pavements are a tad uneven. Then the kerbs are vertiginous. Then the bushes, scrub, verges are deeply unsettling. By now – 19.30 – it is pitch black. Pitch black because… the power is out. The power companies are “load shedding” which can go on for hours. Load-shedding means no car-park lighting. No streetlights. No “robots” either. (Where “robots” are the quaint local term for traffic lights.)
It is all of the dark.
At the best of times motorists here have a certain approach to the major road junction. Obviously, naturally, of course drivers apply caution as usually there are filtered robots at this cross roads: six lanes on one axis, four on the other. Even then you try not to stop fully, properly despite what the lights command. You see one doesn’t linger because someone might relieve you of your phone, your life. The Highway Code and the instinct for self-preservation mis-align from here on in. “Driving” isn’t a simple main course of “cross the junction safely.” It also invloves sides of don’t linger, don’t get robbed.
Being a pedestrian here – I belatedly realise – is suboptimal.
Even when the traffic signals are cheerfully roboting by day, locals don’t really adhere to their instruction in a uniform way. The signals are open to, let’s call it, interpretation.
At night though…
First off, car headlights are terribly bright aren’t they? I mean, like, super-dazzling bright. Never really noticed before bright. So your eyesight is hampered. Then noises in the bushes seem alarmingly louder, masked by thrumming diesel generators (feeding the shops/restuarants) and the traffic itself. When I reach the roadside proper I am scanning for undesirables (any pedestrians), assessing the speed of the approaching traffic, making judgments about the liklihood of someone driving against the road directions and trying not to fall into culverts. What’s that thrumming, thumping sensation? Ian, that’ll be your heart.
GO!
I also notice that when I leg it across the highway I am not as fleet of foot as my racing ticker would like.(It’s 5,000′ altitude here and my belly is wibbly-wobbly full.)
How very dare you! I am no fool. I am PREPARED clutching a LED flashlight I equipped myself with before leaving Blighty – hat tip to ex-local Corene. Although I can’t help but notice that compared to modern SUV gas-disharge headlamps, it’s beam is weedy.
Clearly I got home (hotel “home”) without any real incident. But the spanking value of dinner is more than offset by the Code BROWN sub-5-minute walk that followed. Not helped any by my involuntary yelp when the car park security attendant piped up with a cheery “hello boss” as I approached reception.
It certainly doesn’t make one want to live here.
aroundtheworldin84days 