Where everybody knows your name

We're spending the night in Ladybrand, a tiny town in South Africa near the Lesotho border, where our friend lives. It's a tiny, dusty little town and we're told that it's in the heart of Afrikaner country, the equivalent to "redneck territory" in the States.

After a very lovely dinner at a Chinese dinner (I might add that it was a very good Chinese meal in the middle of nowhere, Africa.), we headed out to one of the local bars. It was still early in the evening, so there weren't very many people out, but all of the other bar patrons were speaking Afrikaans.

Our host was the belle of the ball and she made her way around, saying hello to all the other locals. The bar's walls were adorned by a few liquor and beer advertisements and the three flat screen televisions were tuned into a cricket match. Under the fluorescent lighting, there was an interesting lighting effect that sprayed red and green dots all around the bar and an adjacent room had three pool tables, one of which we quickly took over.

It was actually a really interesting experience, being in the middle of nowhere, in a divey bar that played Eurotrash dance music (with a fun "Poker Face" remix thrown in for good measure). Our host's friend told us that if we were to walk in five years earlier, with our same eclectic group (two white South Africans, one black South African, an Indian woman, a Chinese American and a two white Americans), it might not have been a pretty picture. You really can't escape the ghost of apartheid in this country and it creates a tension that I am certainly not used to in San Francisco.