We’ve all been there – you’re travelling or living overseas and meet someone for the first time. As soon as they realise you’re from South Africa, the questions start!
These are my top 10 questions you should never ask a South African.
Browsing Category
Personal
Last month I got to tick off one of the most exciting items on my bucket list – a proper South African game reserve experience. After years of researching and patiently waiting for our trip, we eventually got to experience a stay at what I think is one of the best private game reserves in South Africa – Nambiti Private Game Reserve in Kwa-Zulu Natal.
There are 9 different lodges to choose from within Nambiti, and I’d had my eye on Ndaka Safari Lodge for a long, LONG time! After what seemed like forever, the day finally arrived for us to check in to Ndaka.
We had THE MOST amazing time, and knowing that lots of you enjoy going back to South Africa and visiting game reserves, I just had to share our experience with you.
As part of our 2-week holiday in South Africa, we decided to take a breather and spend a weekend in the Drakensberg. After some research online, I discovered Champagne Castle Hotel in the central region of the picturesque Drakensberg.
They had horses on site so I was sold on the spot! It’s always been a dream of mine to go horse riding in the Drakensberg and this was my chance to finally tick it off my bucket list.
We’ve recently started planning a South African holiday which will be our first trip back to South Africa since 2010. We had planned to visit in 2017 but after a few personal hiccups last year, we decided to postpone it until 2018 when things had settled down a bit.
As with any holiday, I think the planning is half the fun! Of course we want to visit a game reserve while we are there, and when I started looking at where to go, I was so excited (and overwhelmed!) to see just how many choices there are today! I’m sure there weren’t as many game reserves when we lived there (or maybe we just never looked for them!).
During my holiday planning, I connected with Jenni Moss from Southey Travel, who are specialists in luxury travel holidays in South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana. She mentioned yet another option I hadn’t discovered, Gorah Elephant Camp. It sounded gorgeous so I asked her to share a bit more about it with you all.
Today I’m interviewing Meg Knox-Davies, a South African blogger over at This Is Us Living now living in Dublin, Ireland. She shares her migration journey, challenges and adventures that her international move has brought her.
Where in South Africa are you from and where do you live now?
I was born and raised in Durban, but we moved up to Joburg in 2012 and were living there before we moved to Ireland at the end of last year. Now we live in Dublin.
What do you blog about and did you start your blog before or after your move?
I started my blog in 2013 to journal my struggle to become a runner, and try get fit, happy and healthy. We made the decision to try living overseas, on our honeymoon, after a very candid chat about what we wanted most out of life. When we moved, my blog sort of started evolving. I have always been very real and honest on my blog, sharing more of our life than I probably should, so when we moved I wanted to talk more about our reasons why and all our travels. |It turned more into showing more of our life, not just the running part. So I rebranded my blog in March 2017 as ‘this is us… living’.
Today I’m interviewing Mariska Goussard, a South African blogger over at The Secret Board now living in The Netherlands. She shares her migration journey, challenges and adventures that her international move has brought her.
Where in South Africa are you from and where do you live now?
My husband and I lived and worked in Cape Town for many years until we moved to Maastricht in the Netherlands in 2016.
Today I’m interviewing Gina Jacobson, a South African mum and blogger at A Bit Of This A Bit Of That now living in Israel. She shares her migration journey, challenges and adventures that her international move has brought her.
Where in South Africa are you from and where do you live now?
I was born and raised in Johannesburg. My family and I moved to Israel in December of 2014 and currently live in the city of Modi’in.
Last week I was asked to become a regular contributor to The South African, a publication for South Africans all over world, but mostly based in the UK. I was so excited to be asked and couldn’t wait to start writing, despite having quite a busy schedule between family, work, running a Facebook group (which takes way more time than you would think!) and writing this blog.
I was given several topics to write about and I suggested a few as well. One of the topics was briefed as a light-hearted piece entitled ‘10 Differences Between South Africans & Australians‘. I wrote it in less than a couple of hours and emailed it off to The South African, who said it was great and scheduled it to be posted and shared on social media.
Within minutes of the post being shared on Facebook, the comments, likes and shares started flowing. I saw the article being shared on some groups as well and that’s where my inspiration for this blog post came from. Instead of people having a laugh or commenting on points they agreed/disagreed with, out came the charming expats with chips on their shoulders. Really big chips.
Every time I see yet another article from another South African moaning about the negativity of expats, and clearly writing with their rose tinted glasses on, I get angry. Really angry. Hulk angry.
The overwhelming theme of South African bloggers and writers lately seems to be the attack of the expat. How dare we leave South Africa and still think we have a right talk about our homeland? It’s like once we step on that plane, we are suddenly obligated to forget our lives there ever existed, or at least we seem to be expected to forget all the bad bits, lest we offend anyone we leave behind.
South African expats around the world seem to be being bashed in every direction I look. Of course we all know the expat (and this also applies to some South Africans who are still living in South Africa) who is constantly moaning and putting the country down and telling everyone how wonderful his new home country is. But not every expat can be or should be tarred with this derogatory brush.