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Wednesday, December 08, 2010DEFINING FRUSTRATIONI admit I've been slack in posting............I'm not trying to make excuses, but I have just been so incredibly frustrated of late, that I could sit down & weep buckets full of self-pitying tears. Somehow, I don't think my weeping or wailing will solve any of the frustrations - in fact, I think I'll probably end up sinking even deeper into the depths of my misery. (Thank you Hubs & fellow blogger Wreckless EuroAfrican for nagging me into action again!) A great deal of my frustration lies with my current town of abode. In the 'old days' it was called Ellisras. In the 'new days' it is called Lephalale. I call it either the Last Khaki Outpost (it must surely take first prize in colour-coded modes of dress - anything you fancy, so long as it's khaki...........it's like living in the Magic Kingdom again, where a woman can have any shade of abaya, so long as it's black!) or Schleppalale, because one finds, most people sommer schlepp through the bloody place. Some are even lucky enough to not have to come back! (I have a sneaking suspicion that the song Hotel California was written with Ellisras in mind). The town has, in a nutshell, a somewhat dubious character of schitzophrenic proportions, because a heap of people don't know what the town is called, or even where it is. It is a town that mirrors small town Alabama, where inbreeders thrive & local kudu tend to have a nervous disposition (that's because they're killed for fun). It is a town that, over the past 18mths, has been inundated with an additional influx of 'outsiders', who have the misfortune to be trapped here, due to the largest construction project on this Dark Continent. Prior to the arrival of us 'outsiders', the town's economy relied primarily on the game hunting industry. People from various parts of SA & indeed, other countries of the world, came here to kill wild animals - for fun. There are more taxidermists than there are fast food outlets. So, due to the influx of 'outsiders', it became very obvious - in a very short space of time - that the town & it's infrastructure couldn't actually cope. Which leads me to one of my biggest frustrations. Unlike other democratic countries (stop laughing!) we have one supplier/installer/provider of landline telephones, called Telkom.  It has, over the years, flogged off tiny bits of itself to other companies, in an a piss-poor attempt to prove that it isn't a monopoly on the telecommunications industry. When it comes to providing landline telephones & ADSL provisions in a town like this, well, I think the often used phrase of "I'll get pregnant before that happens" certainly rings true (pun fully intended). When I first arrived here last August, I discovered that A) there wasn't a Telkom office, B) the Post Office (tied in with Telkom) hadn't had a phone application form for years & C) there was a 12mth list to get onto the actual Waiting List of approximately 2yrs to apply for a landline phone. In other words, new residents were well & truly fucked. Plan B - there's always a Plan B when living in Africa - meant the only other form of connectivity with the Outside World - i.e. anywhere outside the borders of Schleppalale - is to use ones cell phone, which is fine (albeit hellish expensive) but not much use when one needs to use the internet for more than 10mins, without having to auction a kidney to pay for the transaction. Another option for obtaining the internet in this area is a 3G connection gadget, which has limited use & tends to work in a mode offering the speed of a garden snail. It helped - I admit - for a few months, but it became increasingly frustrating when you could be halfway through downloading a particular matter of importance, only to have a little icon pop up, telling you that there was only so many kilobytes left before it required yet another expensive top up. . And then I discovered an internet service provider, who boasted it didn't need a landline for connectivity & who could provide a 24/7 service at a monthly fee which wouldn't require me to sell off certain body parts to the highest bidder. I paid a rather large chunk of money to this ISP & a man came out to the house & fitted all the necessary bits of gadgetry/wires/cables etc in order for us to be connected to the World Wide Web. Huzzah Telkom! Go screw your landline! Initially, the service worked competently enough. I could communicate with the outside world. I could do my banking/blogging/shopping etc etc. Every now & again, the service 'went down' but the down time wasn't too inconvenient. Until............................... A rather nasty thunderstorm. And a particularly nasty bolt of lightening hit The Tower. The Tower is the thing that hosts the Server of our ISP. Telkom owns The Tower & 'leases' out space for other ISP's. And Telkom is in no hurry to fix it's Tower. It has made temporary repairs, but they are in no apparant hurry to fix the problem(s) properly. Which means my internet connection is up & down faster than a whores knickers. Which means I can't download stuff I need. Which means I can't talk to my family on Skype without getting cut off 10 times during a 30minute conversation. Which means I have been half-way through credit card transactions & been left hanging like a Pierrepoint cock-up. It means I'm frustrated. Very fucking frustrated. I'm expected to pay up nearly a thousand bucks a month for a service I'm not provided with. The term 'kak en betaal' (translated = shit & pay) should be this towns motto. So much emphasis is placed on the use of the internet nowadays, but in Schleppalale, you're s'posed to feel fucking priviledged for having an on/off service. . *sigh* . My other frustrations all amount to living here basically. Friends are leaving (I miss you Pam!!!) local supermarkets stock an item & then don't re-stock it again for months on end, the potholes & extremely dangerous road conditions leading into/out of the town to major cities like Pretoria or Joburg, now leave us quite literally with a sense of dread if we have to travel & gawd forbid, if someone needs to actually find our house, well, all I can do is direct them from the Police station, because just about anyone knows where that is! The local municipality has placed much emphasis on the re-marking of parking slots outside of shops, but it can't find it in it's budget to put up street signs - fuck no, that's way too technical! New housing complexes have sprung up like mushrooms, but they don't have visible names or indicators. Hubs & I were the first people to move into the complex where we are, some 16mths ago. There is no street sign & there is no sign on the complex, indicating its actual name. The complex is now full & like us, I'm sure other residents have to go into great detail to explain where they live. But hey, lets demarcate parking slots on the main street! . I'm frustrated because I've had to make an appointment to have a mammogram done whilst we're on holiday. No medical facility in this town has the correct machine to perform such a test. If the roads weren't so bad, I would've gone down to Joburg or Pretoria for the test. The basic infrastructure of this country is falling to bloody pieces but the government insists on sucking ever increasing taxes out of us, yet they don't fix any of the problems. Whoopie for the Gautrain! Whoopie for Medupi! Whoopie for hosting a successful Soccer World Cup! Now how about fixing the fucking roads? How about prosecuting employees who steal from state hospitals & other such insistutions? How about getting rid of all of the corrupt municipality bosses? How about allowing free enterprise instead of expecting us to simply shut-up & put up with the absolute bollocks that we have to contend with on a daily basis? . . . I am so looking forward to getting out of here over the Crimble shut-down period! Labels: Ellisras/Schleppalale, Screamer, Telkom  
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