Somebody needs to fix the road signs in the remote northwest of South Africa.

See, the drive from Nelspruit in the east to Upington was supposed to be so easy. Once we survived driving through the Johannesburg area without being carjacked it was a straight shot on what they call the N14.

"They must have run out of stickers."
Trouble is the N14 turns out to have been a patchwork of small local roads of various names. The roads department simply drove around plastering N14 stickers over the old signs. Except they must have run out of stickers a few times.

Something like five times we'd find ourselves in the middle of nowhere with no signs directing us to the N14. Just the signs that we later figured were the roads that make up the N14 but were never posted as such.

"When the white people came a'colonizing."
But we found our way to Upington, a small city in the Kalahari desert near the Namibian border. It's quiet here and interestingly has far more white people and far fewer black people than most South African cities. I suppose it's because there weren't many people living here at all when the white people came a'colonizing.

We're now car-free. The red Toyota went back to Avis this morning, in amazingly good shape after what it's been put through. We did, though find some startling and disturbing things stuck in various places as we cleaned the car. Amazing what happens when you basically live in a car for a month.

"Some fairly shocking stuff."
We got an earful about the racial state of South Africa and the continent as a whole from Kevin, who runs the hostel we stayed at near Nelspruit. Some fairly shocking stuff. It's a bit unfair to take what he said out of context. He does say he sees great things to come for South Africa's black government and people, but then he said things like this...

Let all the AIDS victims die.

Yeah. He said it. And he said debt relief for African countries is a bad idea because "these blacks" will just keep taking and never pay anything back. "No more white guilt" also kept coming out of his mouth.

"But it doesn't seem to be working."
I suppose one can understand a certain frustration with the state that this country and continent are in. Lots of money (maybe not enough) gets spent to stop AIDS and improve lives, but it doesn't seem to be working. Even volunteers who came here to work on AIDS projects are often frustrated.

I found what he said startling if not particularly surprising. We've see several situations where whites seem a little depressed that the party's over and they're not running the place anymore. And I imagine Kevin's comments reflect what many people here and elsewhere think sometimes, while expressing their thoughts in a more politically correct way.

"Assuming they're like yourself."
It's always amazing, though, to see someone who otherwise seems so normal come out saying something like that. Makes you realize that when you don't know a person very well you tend to fill in the blanks by assuming they're like yourself.

On to Namibia soon.