Executive Summary:

- Books finished: Kaffir Boy

- Animals seen: Ostrich, Rottweiler

- Visited grandparents gravesite

- Had close encounter with a famous South African musician, just not that famous that anyone actually knew who he was

- Started to work out that Afrikaans is actually spoken commonly

Trip to Welkom - Day 2

Dad said Welkom is like Nebraska. He's not wrong (well, Nebraska with biltong shops and the aforementioned razor wire).

We drove 2 hours out of Jo'burg with Ian and Jackie to Welkom, stopping at a roadside petrol station / truck stop along the way for coffee. All petrol stations are staffed in South Africa with people waiting to fill your tank and wash your windows (for a $0.50 tip). Saw lots of corn fields and a few, um, herds (??) of ostriches along the way too.

Welkom itself is a mining town that was about 25,000 pop in 1962 and is now about 750,000. It's in the heart of 'Afrikaaner' country in the Orange Free State which means that, when addressing you, people speak Afrikaans first and English second. Though different, Afrikaans looks and sounds like Dutch (or Greek! hah!) to me and to be frank I'm surprised it's not a dying language given the prevalence of English. But there are still Afrikaans journals/magazines, tv shows, etc, so obviously it lives on.

We stopped first at Ian's old house, then Dad's (all changed since late 50s of course) before having lunch at the golf course in town.

Then it came time to visit the cemetery. Turns out Ian's nephew and his wife live in town with their daughter, and Warren was going to accompany us to the cemetery (not an armed guard...which in hindsight would have been extreme overkill on Ian's part). Warren wasn't home yet so we spent a little bit of time with his family and his newborn rottweiler - much more cuddly than mum & dad, who were serving their purpose as guard dogs out the back of the house.

The cemetery was on the outskirts of town near the black 'township' (polite apartheid name for ghetto) and after some difficulty searching through long grass and many sections, we found the gravesite of my grandparents. Of course I had never met them but it was nice to have visited nonetheless and important to me to have been there when Dad did.

After the visit we were dropped off at the guesthouse for a rest before dinner. We went to dinner with Ian, Jackie, Warren, and his family. It was a strange little restaurant known for its steak, which mom & dad ordered but in an attempt to eat lightly I ordered prawns.

Breaking, of course, the rule that you never order seafood when completely inland, and regretting doing so afterwards.