Last week, I was in Johannesburg and Cape Town. I arrived on a Sunday morning at the rather ungodly hour of 4am. As we walked through the airport I couldn't help but make comparisons between their O.R. Tambo and our Murtala Mohammed airport. For starters, I was not, at the precise moment of disembarkation, choked by a noxious cloud of dry, dusty, violently hot air. There were no random people hanging about calling me Aunty, or Chairwoman, or Big Sister in the hope that a bit of cash might pass between their hands and mine. The loos were clean, in that there was no wading through water on the floor, and I felt comfy enough to brush my teeth at the airport without the fear of catching a violent strain of something nasty. The escalators worked. The air conditioning worked. The baggage came out on time, without the tell tale signs of pilfering. There weren't hoards of people, and the people that there were did not smell.
In the car on the way home, I could not get over how beautiful the sight out of the window was. Between the airport and the drive to Sandton, everything was pretty. There was greenery. There were gorgeous Jacaranda trees everywhere. The traffic lights (or robots, as the Saffas call them) worked. The big industrial buildings were clean. There were no beggars on the road side with eyelids turned inside out going 'akoba adaba alomajareeeee.' I hate to sound like Carrie Bradshaw, because much as I love her, I hate it when she says this - but I couldn't help but wonder...
But really, I couldn't help but wonder; when, if ever my own country might look like this. I thought this same thought when I landed in Accra in September. Other parts of Africa are putting us to shame. When will we ever be so clean and civilised and welcoming? I asked a few people whom I consider to be generally quite knowledgeable and upbeat and their immediate answer was 'NO'. That depressed me a little bit because it is sad to think that when I have kids, they too will inhabit the dirty, dismal, disorganised environment that it has taken me nearly 30 years to come to terms with, and which I still cannot reconcile with our so called might and greatness.
I don't know what the solution is, or if indeed there is a solution, but boy do we need to sort out our mediocrity. Our environment is a disgrace!