Adventures of an Expat in South Africa
Despite fears of crime, the biggest fear for many South Africa-bound expats with children is whether they’re making a mistake with their choice of school. Of all the questions I get asked, school choice is always the one that seems to cause the most sleepless nights. Here is a look at the lessons we learned from sending our kids to school in South Africa (hint: they were fine).
Climbing Kili is magical. For many people it's also life-changing. If you already live in Africa, especially at high altitude in Johannesburg, you'd do yourself a disservice if you didn't give the highest free-standing mountain in the world at least serious consideration. You don't need to be a mountain-climber. All you need is a spirit of adventure, and perhaps more importantly, a sense of humor.
Lawson Ricketts and Nick Geimer are two American expats who fell in love with Johannesburg and upon their return to the United States founded Ngala Trading Co. to bring luxury African interior design and decor to the North American market. Read all about the founding of their company in this feature article on Joburg Expat.
Eight years ago we arrived in South Africa to begin our expat life. The country was poised to host the Soccer World Cup, the first on African soil. I remember that at the time there were heated debates whether tourists would dare travel to a place so notorious for the crime on its streets. Here is a look at how South Africa has changed since then in terms of crime and security.
So you’re a trailing spouse and you’ve made your peace with moving to South Africa. You may even have allowed yourself to become excited at the prospect. But you hate to give up working altogether. What are your options for finding employment in South Africa?
This is a scenario many ...
What to do in Johannesburg is a perennially popular topic which I’ve written about before. This time, I’ve put together a list for you in a slightly different format. I hope you enjoy the below Joburg A to Z guide just to get you started, with many links to more details. Enjoy!
South Africa ...
In light of recent comments by the American President about African countries and their people, here is a look at one of those African countries. South Africans possess many unique attributes that we should welcome in any immigrant, if he or she even chooses to leave their beautiful country in order to move to another whose president loves to hurl insults at the rest of the world.
One of my favorite small expat joys I acquired a taste for in South Africa is Malva Pudding. I can always conjure up a tiny bit of the magic of of a fiery African sunset, the awe of watching a dazzle of zebras approach a waterhole, or the heart-stopping shock of hearing the hadeda's first cry in the morning by making this consummate South African dessert.
My recent migration of blogging platforms gave me an opportunity to speed-read through Joburg Expat. This gave me an excellent bird's-eye view of what South Africa has done for our family. Our lives are richer for having lived in Johannesburg for three years, gone to school there, and traveled the continent. Thank you South Africa for everything, starting with biltong.
This Thanksgiving break I inexplicably got it in my head to migrate my blog from Blogger to WordPress. What I should have done is a) picked a more opportune time when I wasn't already extremely busy, and b) created a test domain to migrate my blog to before switching to live, which I could have built in peace and tested to my heart's content until it was rock solid. But I didn't.