Folks,
Arrived in this jewel of a town last night - and will be here for a couple of weeks.
Capetown is in idyllic setting - flying in we had a magnificent view of the cape, and Table mountain, the georgeous center of town nestled against the sea, the large residential areas behind, and the MASSIVE shantytowns of the black and colored townships outside.
These are being rebuilt, slowly, but what were residential areas enfoced by passboks are now a form of economic apertheid.
The ANC promised its supporters that they too would have brick houses when the revolution came - but building 2 million brick houses takes a little time, money, and a realisation by black people that they now have opportunity, not free lunches.
This is a first world town, with great prices .. brew-pubs, internet cafes (from where I am writing this) a whole community of european tourists like me, music, 60s throwbacks .. Just an amazing place. gush - gush ..
Paradoxically, Windhoek beer is all the rage in RSA - it is considered the best in Southern Africa.
So, I can read my mail easily from here - great
On my last day in Windhoek I spent the afternoon with a guy from the university computer science dept trying to get FreeBSD (another free unix operating system) up and running on his Pentium/66. We never did get the ethernet card working properly - what a shame. Unfortunately, he had only a part of the distribution - a minimal one - by ftp, I told him to get the CDROM.
Looking to buy a used motorcycle to get around RSA.
Cheers, Andy!