February 20, 1998 : Cape Town, South Africa
At the Cape Town airport, we are met by a strange young man and a portly man. The portly man would say something he thought was funny and then burst into violent laughter. It got very tiring. I figured if he was going to laugh that hard I had to laugh as well, even though he wasn’t funny.
No one knew where our hotel was. They hadn’t heard of it. That is a bad sign. But our first priority was to find a photo lab so we could have my film from Soweto developed. We only had fifteen minutes. We found a one-hour lab in a mall. I told the guy in the lab that I needed three rolls developed, negatives only, as soon as possible. I told him I had no extra time. He said no problem, it would only take fifteen minutes.
He figured out I was a professional and started asking me about what cameras I used. I said Nikon. He asked which model. I said F5. He couldn’t believe it. He begged me to bring it in when I picked up the film so he could see it. I went out into the mall and looked at some shops, then returned to the photo lab after fifteen minutes.
When I walked in, the guy was just barely putting my first two rolls into the machine. I couldn’t believe it. I grabbed my third roll back and told him I wouldn’t have time to run all three. I could only hope that my best shots were on those two rolls.
I pulled out my camera. He was amazed I would let him hold it. He showed it to a co-worker and said, “This is the most highest professional camera in the world. It costs 28,000 Rand.” (US $5,600, more than twice what it cost me in the US.)
I pulled out my Leica to take a picture of him looking at the camera. That sent off another wave of astonishment. “You have a Leica M6 too?!”
Because he thought I was cool he gave me a 10% discount, which saved me sixty-cents.
We got in the van with the other Utah reporters (Deseret News and KSL-TV) and drove to the next spot that LDS President Gordon B. Hinckley would be speaking. Since our competition flew into Cape Town early this morning, they had no time for anything like the trip into Soweto we took this morning. We made sure to tell them how great it was, just to rub it in.
These other reporters seem to have done nothing other than cover Hinckley’s speeches. We’ve done that as well as filling every spare minute finding other stories and seeking out people to interview. We’ve been working our asses off and great stories have been the result.
Tonight’s meeting is in an mostly white, upscale community.
At the end of the meeting, those gathered waved goodbye to Hinckley. It was a very emotional moment, and many were brought to tears. I was drawn the image of this man, Atholl Howden:
At the end of the day we finally reach our hotel, starving and tired. We just have to file our Soweto story and then we can eat and finally have some laundry done. But is it ever that easy?
I should have known this hotel sucked when I walked in off the pleasantly cool street into the unbearably hot lobby. It’s only after we check in and hit our rooms that we realize there is no room service or laundry, which we desperately need today. This just isn’t going to work. We stay long enough to send our photos and story back to the newspaper and quickly check out.
We find another hotel just down the street and it’s worlds better. At 11:30pm we finally get our first real food of the day.
Links to the rest of this series:
Cape Town
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