Umtata Miracle

10th July






Last Saturday was a miraculous occasion: for the first time in Zithulele history, two people [namely Lisa and I] had a successful shopping trip to Mthatha. Usually you arrive in that wonderful city, drive around all day trying to buy things that are out of stock, battling with crowds, traffic, unhelpful shop assistants and broken ATMs...it's just not fun. So we got up early, expecting one of those kinds of days and made our way along the steadily improving strip of potholes that lead to Mthatha.







The first stop was the post office which admittedly was not so promising when they informed us they didn't sell padded envelopes or air mail stamps and only had a measly six international land mail stamps [and I'm convinced they are the other half of the sheet I bought way back in February]. We bought out their entire stock anyway, resolving to do the usual and 'make a plan' which is the standard Zithulele response to any situation from someone's car breaking down to the entire hospital running out of gloves and syringes...







Then we went to PEP which is a cheap shop that sells everything and I finally bought some a new pair of flip flops [exactly the same as the old pair:)]. My old ones were literally, and I'm not exaggerating, a few millimetres thick in places and had various holes in them from where I've stood on sharp stones so I was in desperate need of the replacements!

A before and after shot of my flip flops

First stop in Umtata itself was the car wash as Lisa's car was in somewhat of a state with mud crusted all over the bottom of it and dust everywhere else. We were in the queue and Lisa got out to buy a coffee, leaving me with the keys and instructions just to move the car forward when the time came. The first time I moved the car it was fine, but the second time I couldn't seem to get the clutch in the right place so when I pressed the accelerator the car shot forward. I slammed the brake on, but it didn't seem to do anything so for some RIDICULOUS reason, I shoved my foot back on the accelerator and the car rocketed forward and smashed straight into the wall. Lucky I was only moving at a high speed of about 2mph so there wasn't too much damage apart from some scratches. I was so shell shocked at what I had just done that I scrambled out the car to look, expecting people to run up shouting at me for being so stupid, but no, no one even moved, and Lisa casually walked over to examine the damage [something I am eternally grateful for, most other people would have gone mental at me!]. With Lisa safely back in the driver's seat we went into the car wash where the attendants looked the car up and down in disbelief at how dirty it was and emerged about fifteen minutes later in what looked like a completely different car.







Next up was the Plaza [Umtata's shopping centre thing] where we spent the rest of the day. Everywhere was World Cup crazy and all the shops were cashing in on it, and as it was one day before the final, it was all on sale. In all the clothes shops you could buy a huge variety of team shirts and jumpers, t-shirts with flags etc – Lisa and I spent over an hour in the one shop looking at it all. We also spent an age in Ackerman’s looking for baby clothes for one of Lisa's friends, and ages in Game [different from the British one] trying to find cockroach killer and looking at DVDs.







We went to Mr Price [kind of like Primark] to buy me some new shorts as I have had one pair stolen and have got holes/rips in another three. While we were there, Lisa asked if she could bring a top she had bought back for a refund. The woman said yes and just took it so we assumed that the money came off the receipt, however when we checked it later, there was so sign of it. So we went back and Lisa asked about it, so they asked if she had a receipt from the original purchase but she didn't. The manager then phoned someone else to ask, and they decided they could give a refund anyway, but only for the discounted price that it was on sale for now. Lisa asked why they couldn't just give the whole sum, and after a lot of chat between the staff, they decided they could give a voucher for the original value. The only thing they need is the date that Lisa bought it, so Lisa says that she doesn't know. The staff told her she could just make it up so she said it was probably about March time. Turns out that they only refund up to 30 days, so instead of saying that she couldn't take it back, they asked for a date that they could use instead! And that was how Lisa accidentally defrauded Mr Price...







By the end of the day the two of us had bought lots of random things between us [and some not so random ones] and we considerably less rich than when we started but it was so cool to have had a successful shopping day in Umtata!







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