Day 4 – Technical difficulties (all better now)

Today was a bit of a fire drill. Last night Keith and I managed to blow up the part of our hard drive tower that regulates power, yes we are brilliant. Our guy Jason was invaluable today and set about helping us solve this problem with the resources here in Johannesburg. We dropped it off at the shop to see what could be done, then headed to Pretoria for an interview.

Pretoria is just as dense and bustling as Johannesburg. Our interviews done, we headed back to Jo’burg (about 40 minutes). Back in town we learned that the guys we left our tower with couldn’t do anything for us aside from selling us a replacement for 45,000 Rand (about $4,500.00). Needless to say, we didn’t see this as a great solution. Jason eventually led us to a small computer shop run by a Bulgarian couple who eventually solved our problem for $60. We breathe again. Did I mention that these Bulgarians were anti-American conspiracy theorists?

they would like you to know the following:

1- America is no longer a free country

2-The U.S. Federal Reserve has been closed for the last 70 years

3- Citibank has secretly gone out of business

This information is a bit hard to swallow when all you’re trying to do is get your flippin’ hardware fixed. We smiled, took the bashing, said thank you, gave the nice people our filthy American money and moved on with our lives.

Later, we cruised around central Johannesburg to shoot broll. Until this afternoon, Keith and I  had been pretty insulated from the crush of humanity that is Johannesburg. This is a city incredibly dense with people. Being out on the street amongst all of the Zulu, Xhosa, Afrikaans and other assorted languages that are spoken here reminded us that we are indeed still in Africa.

Not many photos today, it was a bit hectic. Tomorrow we fly to Port Elizabeth and New Brighton Township.

Pretoria corner

Pretoria