PINJOHN
01-25-2012, 10:09 AM
This was a story i shared with Steve on Skype some weeks ago.
earlier in the year my eldest daughter Joanne exchanged university's and left Liverpool to study in Durban,South Africa.
While there she was on the look out for a present for her old dad, something snakey she had decided, but she met with little luck as she was at that point unaware of the terror with which the average African views snakes, but not to be outdone she persisted with her search and eventually met with success, [photo below]
being a fairly accurate representative of the female persuasion my daughter shows little patience in life, so she decided to fined out how much it would cost to post it home, rather than wait to bring it with her on her home coming, she duly bundled it in her bag and set off for the post office, she tells me that the local post office was a place of much business so was consequently always very busy, with usually four long lines of queuing people, after waiting her turn she gets to the counter and says to the fellow behind the counter I would like to send this to England please could you tell me how much, while talking she was struggling to extract the wooden snake from her bag and at last succeeded the the huge African guy behind the counter momentarily froze, his eyes went the largest she had ever seen on a human being, and he screamed out something in zulu at which point the post office turned into an African version of bedlam,total chaos, each queue disintegrating as they attempted to put as much distance between them selves and the lethal venomous monster that the crazy white woman had pulled from her bag, people elbowing each other, shoving the weaker and slower out of the way, some of them reaching speeds that would have done credit to Carl Lewis, doors blocked as they all tried to push through at the same time, all this while every occupant was screaming at the top of whats possible within the limits of the human voice,....within what seemed seconds she was the only living person in the place, standing stunned and aghast at the devastation she had brought about, she was frozen to the spot terrified as to what would happen to her because of her actions, after what seemed ages a black face appeared around the door smiled and said something to her which she did not catch, after a few more seconds he hesitantly came towards her still smiling and talking fast in Zulu which then swapped to English good joke very good joke he beamed and shouted again in zulu something to the people outside at which point they all came streaming back in but instead of being angry
and aggressive with her every body seemed to be in carnival mood laughing and crowding about to see the crazy lady and her wooden snake but even though it was now known to be a toy snake not one person would actually touch it, throughout her stay from that day on she was hailed and greeted when she was out and about and she fell in love with the Zulu people whom she insists are the nicest people in the world, it is her intention to live and teach in south Africa when she attains her degree later this year
http://www.thamnophis.com/thamphotos/data//500/medium/P12400912.jpg
earlier in the year my eldest daughter Joanne exchanged university's and left Liverpool to study in Durban,South Africa.
While there she was on the look out for a present for her old dad, something snakey she had decided, but she met with little luck as she was at that point unaware of the terror with which the average African views snakes, but not to be outdone she persisted with her search and eventually met with success, [photo below]
being a fairly accurate representative of the female persuasion my daughter shows little patience in life, so she decided to fined out how much it would cost to post it home, rather than wait to bring it with her on her home coming, she duly bundled it in her bag and set off for the post office, she tells me that the local post office was a place of much business so was consequently always very busy, with usually four long lines of queuing people, after waiting her turn she gets to the counter and says to the fellow behind the counter I would like to send this to England please could you tell me how much, while talking she was struggling to extract the wooden snake from her bag and at last succeeded the the huge African guy behind the counter momentarily froze, his eyes went the largest she had ever seen on a human being, and he screamed out something in zulu at which point the post office turned into an African version of bedlam,total chaos, each queue disintegrating as they attempted to put as much distance between them selves and the lethal venomous monster that the crazy white woman had pulled from her bag, people elbowing each other, shoving the weaker and slower out of the way, some of them reaching speeds that would have done credit to Carl Lewis, doors blocked as they all tried to push through at the same time, all this while every occupant was screaming at the top of whats possible within the limits of the human voice,....within what seemed seconds she was the only living person in the place, standing stunned and aghast at the devastation she had brought about, she was frozen to the spot terrified as to what would happen to her because of her actions, after what seemed ages a black face appeared around the door smiled and said something to her which she did not catch, after a few more seconds he hesitantly came towards her still smiling and talking fast in Zulu which then swapped to English good joke very good joke he beamed and shouted again in zulu something to the people outside at which point they all came streaming back in but instead of being angry
and aggressive with her every body seemed to be in carnival mood laughing and crowding about to see the crazy lady and her wooden snake but even though it was now known to be a toy snake not one person would actually touch it, throughout her stay from that day on she was hailed and greeted when she was out and about and she fell in love with the Zulu people whom she insists are the nicest people in the world, it is her intention to live and teach in south Africa when she attains her degree later this year
http://www.thamnophis.com/thamphotos/data//500/medium/P12400912.jpg