Storm over Pretoria

Almost two weeks have passed since I signed for my car. Two weeks, in which the dealer called me almost daily asking if I had paid for it and when the payment was going to go through. You can imagine that this got slightly annoying – how am I supposed to influence the time it takes to transfer money from Germany to South Africa? What you cannot imagine is how angry I got when he dared to call me on Tuesday asking me when I was intending to come and pick the car up – making it sound like it had been sitting there and waiting for me for days! I wanted to strangle him and hit him with a big hammer (Ewa watches a lot of cartoons… I blame them for my aggressions!). I told him I would try and get insurance for the car as I was not gonna drive it anywhere without insurance cover. Most of you would probably agree that I would crash it at the first junction – if I’d make it that far! So I spend my day answering the same stupid questions all over again to get a good quote on my insurance. I found one, but annoyingly South African internet and fax let me down so that I could not go and get the car the same day anymore, which I found really disappointing!


Sitting on my lovely desk all day long (the photo shows you my view over Pretoria), I could see that the sky was getting darker by the hour. Scary clouds appeared behind the mountains and were pushing into the valley. Praying that it would not start to rain before we had gotten to our car park was a definite success as god spared us the worst thunderstorm that I have ever seen. Seconds after leaving the parking lot it started pouring it down and within minutes the streets had turned into small rivers!
Ewa and I were on our way to a dinner party and had to drive about 20km/h with warning lights on as we could not see anything! Stopping at a supermarket, I got soaked just jumping out of the car and running under cover – a maximum of two meters was enough to drench me completely! In the shopping center, all the lights had gone, the fridges were off and nothing was working anymore!
Coming back out of the supermarket, the (covered!) way to our car was flooded and there were huge puddles everywhere! Seriously people, appreciate the amazing sewer system of Germany and even the UK one is still great compared to Africa! We could only drive in the middle of the roads as the sides stood a couple of feet deep under water – and this all within less than twenty minutes!
But once again I think I should not complain – fair enough I did get soaked again walking from the car – under a roof! – to the front door (about half a meter, and we are not talking just slightly wet) but in many other African countries the roads would have probably disappeared completely …
So thinking about it, I really should thank God that my car dealer is crap, the insurance companies slow and internet unreliable when you once want it to work: The thought alone of having my first ever journey in a car by myself in these conditions makes me shiver…