Waffle House Nation

Some of you know of my prodigious affection for the Waffle House, that enduring American institution of greasy cheap food. Its menu prices have not changed since 1958. You can get eggs, toast, grits, a waffle, and coffee and it's still under $5, with tip.

This is a Waffle House NATION.

Need blue jeans? You can get them for $10. My friend James bought a pair of sunglasses for 10 rand, which is like $1.40 US. And last night 4 of us went out for a nice dinner, where I had steak, 6 king prawns, and dessert and coffee.

It cost me less than $20.

The only things that tend to cost something approximating US value are services catering specifically to tourists, like internet cafes or American coffee shops. (I am writing this from a Seattle's Best Coffee joint, so those of you concerned about my coffee jones can be at ease--I won't have to brave that sludgy Turkish coffee for a few more weeks. And even here my chai latte is about a buck less than in the States.)

In other news, one of the things I am loving about my hostel are the people I am finding who are interested and active in issues very similar to mine, but who come at it from a different enough angle to make it a valuable and provocative perspective. (Because it they were just like me, one of us would be redundant.) Sure, there are a good number of people who came to drink and party their way across the continent; but there's Tim, the Duke grad student interning at a policy think-tank on justice and reconciliation around land reform; Brandon, who just finished 3 months here studying international development and is thinking of divinity school; and Aubrey, the brooding Irishman who's lived here 5 years and runs a nonprofit for HIV/AIDS education, and who started our conversation being very critical of what he thought was going to be my American save-the-world idealism and do-gooder Christianity and ended up sending me off with a Great Commission to harness the power and good will of American Christians to do development work in a more sustainable, empowering way than we have done it in the past. "I had you very wrong," he admitted during our very intense 2 am conversation; "if you had thought you had it all figured out after 2 weeks here I'd be very suspicious of you, but you've said all the right things, most significantly 'I don't know.'" Oh, Aubrey, if only you knew how regularly I use those three little words.

And then there's the grab-bag of random folks: James, the London university student who's wrapping up a month-long overland tour in Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Botswana and Swaziland, and who got mugged yesterday for his Coke (not his wallet, not his cash, not his jacket or sunglasses; his half-drunk can of Coke); Simon, who when he's not cavorting about the globe runs 1/3 of the London metro system--he RUNS THE LONDON UNDERGROUND, people, I am so travelling for free next time I'm in London; and Ingrid, the Swedish girl I immediately sized up as the pretty, vacant au-pair type, until I found out she's writing her master's thesis in political science on African development; thou shalt not judge a book by its fair-haired cover, children. The four of us went out to the beach to watch the sun set over the Atlantic yesterday, a great flaming ball sinking into the sea, and it was one of those moments when I think "I'm in Africa!" and it's surreal, because it's too good to be true.