Back from Africa

[spamassassin]

Went over to work out some details of my impending retirement to the dark continent. While I was there I had the opportunity to take a red lechwe. Normally one of these would be simply too expensive but a good friend hooked me up with a hunt at a price I could not afford to scoff at. Taken with a .308win Sako wearing a USO optic and for the first time in my hunting in Africa, the rifle was not suppressed. Just a bare muzzle. 2 in the shoulder using Nosler Accubond's. The first one thoroughly disconnected the on-side shoulder bones from the rest of the constituent parts of the bugger and set the old boy's handbrake. The 2nd shot, while possibly being not entirely necessary, unburdened us of the whole "chase me, chase me" ritual and disconnected the heart from the other parts that were still connected to each other. When I got up to it, both front feet were over the head between the horns like it was expecting to be cuffed. Clearly it was feeling guilty about something. Chalk up one more hide and skull and another good time hanging out with friends.

Side story: South Africa is one of those special places where it's just safe enough across enough of it to be relaxing while being just off the rails enough to be properly fun and exciting. Upon landing in Johannesburg I was seated in the plane such that I was surrounded by 3 middle aged german couples who'd never been to any part of Africa before much less South Africa. It's all perfectly fine as long as you don't do anything truly stupid. Their whole trip had been planned by one of the gals who'd brought along the thing she used to plan the trip: a guide book which mentioned all of the neat stuff while mentioning exactly none of the realities of the situation. I glanced through at the sticky note'd pages for the hotspots they planned on visiting and noticed that the book was, if not directly misleading, clearly written by someone that probably enjoyed surprise buttsex a good deal more than most would. The Germans saw my taken aback-ness and asked for any tips I might have to add. As it was about midnight when we landed, I suggested that they get a room at one of the hotels on the airport grounds rather than go galavanting around Joburg after dark. They looked stunned, as if my concern for their probability of living long and happy lives was somehow a distinctly paranoid delusion. Because someone further forward on the plane was being arrested for being a drunken dick to the cabin crew we had a good bit of time to chat and I think that I and a friendly local who'd joined in to echo my admonition to exercise special caution after dark had finally managed to convey that while many parts of South Africa are quite nice and the people generally lack in true malice with most being friendly in a burglar-ish/beggar-ish kind of way; especially the Western Cape province which is still exceptionally nice in most spots and the people very warm and friendly with very little burglar-ish/beggar-ish overtones, Joburg is one of the more unlovely parts of Africa generally and it's best left to one side for first timers. I then gave them the most important tip I could: do not simply rely on GPS for navigation in South Africa. Ever. Instead to hit google maps, google earth, etc... and have a really damned good notion of exactly where they'd be going and how exactly they'd get there before ever heading out on any particular journey lest one end inadvertently up in one of the exceptionally unlovely parts of the country where things can get very exciting very quickly.

 

[MK20]

It was much better when you could fly into SA with your 1911 and carry it as you went out into Joburg. Then you could just shoot the bastards.

Africa was much better when the local idiots knew if they fucked around they would find out.

It's still like that in some areas but not like it used to be.

 

[Fig]

Not since there was a Rhodesia and Ian Smith's scouts were running about.

Love him or hate him Smith did predict everything that has happened almost exactly as it has happened. If I were to move to Africa I would rent only and never hold any assets there.

 

[spamassassin]

Not since there was a Rhodesia and Ian Smith's scouts were running about.

Love him or hate him Smith did predict everything that has happened almost exactly as it has happened. If I were to move to Africa I would rent only and never hold any assets there.

Depends on the assets you decide to hold really. Real estate is certainly not what one should be looking to acquire without a great deal of introspection but that's the case the world over including in the USA. I already bought a house but it's a small 700sqft 2br/1ba in the middle of >40sqmi of high fences and zero humans. The house cost me under $30k and is 100% off grid. Having a 15km long driveway that takes the better part of an hour to traverse helps alleviate many of the remaining issues. Nonetheless, for the average joe your point is relevant and valid. It's not a place to think your property will appreciate in value.

 

[MK20]

Is there any country in Africa still where gun ownership is essentially free like the US?

I know many areas are defacto unregulated and those are interesting too.

 

[oldshooterback]

Been fortunate to have been to South Africa twice on safari, awesome place. IMHO, everyone should visit at least once. Leopard hunt was the hardest hunt of my life and I have been hunting 70 years.

 

[spamassassin]

Is there any country in Africa still where gun ownership is essentially free like the US?

I know many areas are defacto unregulated and those are interesting too.

South Africa's gun laws and those of most countries with intact governments are a bit like most other countries that allow civilian gun ownership that aren't the USA, you have to get a license for each gun, there are restrictions on how many and of what type, the paperwork/process is somewhat more onerous (about like New England states) and there are a number of restrictions that seem facially just stupid and pointless. On the other side, there are things that are effectively totally unrestricted like suppressor ownership.

 

[Fig]

I would not live off the grid in Africa without some of M. T. Kalashnikov's finest creations and a few spam cans to fuel them. While you're unlikely to bump into anyone out there (to put it in your own words) the likelihood of it getting exciting fast is too high to rely on just a bolt action or double gun. I'm sure there are plenty of off the grid vendors who can get them for much less than we're paying for a built rifle.

 

[Californio]

Would differently need a pack of Rhodesian Ridgebacks patrolling an AO as described.

 

[spamassassin]

I would not live off the grid in Africa without some of M. T. Kalashnikov's finest creations and a few spam cans to fuel them. While you're unlikely to bump into anyone out there (to put it in your own words) the likelihood of it getting exciting fast is too high to rely on just a bolt action or double gun. I'm sure there are plenty of off the grid vendors who can get them for much less than we're paying for a built rifle.

You ain't wrong at all and such considerations have been duly attended to. I'm not under any misconceptions of the place being something other than it is. It's in a very nice part of Africa but it's still in Africa and as a wise man once said, "Everything in Africa bites..."

 

[Docsherm]

Is there any country in Africa still where gun ownership is essentially free like the US?

I know many areas are defacto unregulated and those are interesting too.

I still have a canceled carry permit from Kenya from those days that I worked there.


And the entire continent of Africa is a shithole.

 

[Ronws]

This reminds me of one those Vine videos that cracked me up. This young man says to an african visting the US, "That is a neat accent. Where are from?"

The visitor replies, "Liberia."

The young man whispers, "Sorry. Where are from?", still in a whisper.

 

[UKDslayer]

Went over to work out some details of my impending retirement to the dark continent. While I was there I had the opportunity to take a red lechwe. Normally one of these would be simply too expensive but a good friend hooked me up with a hunt at a price I could not afford to scoff at. Taken with a .308win Sako wearing a USO optic and for the first time in my hunting in Africa, the rifle was not suppressed. Just a bare muzzle. 2 in the shoulder using Nosler Accubond's. The first one thoroughly disconnected the on-side shoulder bones from the rest of the constituent parts of the bugger and set the old boy's handbrake. The 2nd shot, while possibly being not entirely necessary, unburdened us of the whole "chase me, chase me" ritual and disconnected the heart from the other parts that were still connected to each other. When I got up to it, both front feet were over the head between the horns like it was expecting to be cuffed. Clearly it was feeling guilty about something. Chalk up one more hide and skull and another good time hanging out with friends.

Side story: South Africa is one of those special places where it's just safe enough across enough of it to be relaxing while being just off the rails enough to be properly fun and exciting. Upon landing in Johannesburg I was seated in the plane such that I was surrounded by 3 middle aged german couples who'd never been to any part of Africa before much less South Africa. It's all perfectly fine as long as you don't do anything truly stupid. Their whole trip had been planned by one of the gals who'd brought along the thing she used to plan the trip: a guide book which mentioned all of the neat stuff while mentioning exactly none of the realities of the situation. I glanced through at the sticky note'd pages for the hotspots they planned on visiting and noticed that the book was, if not directly misleading, clearly written by someone that probably enjoyed surprise buttsex a good deal more than most would. The Germans saw my taken aback-ness and asked for any tips I might have to add. As it was about midnight when we landed, I suggested that they get a room at one of the hotels on the airport grounds rather than go galavanting around Joburg after dark. They looked stunned, as if my concern for their probability of living long and happy lives was somehow a distinctly paranoid delusion. Because someone further forward on the plane was being arrested for being a drunken dick to the cabin crew we had a good bit of time to chat and I think that I and a friendly local who'd joined in to echo my admonition to exercise special caution after dark had finally managed to convey that while many parts of South Africa are quite nice and the people generally lack in true malice with most being friendly in a burglar-ish/beggar-ish kind of way; especially the Western Cape province which is still exceptionally nice in most spots and the people very warm and friendly with very little burglar-ish/beggar-ish overtones, Joburg is one of the more unlovely parts of Africa generally and it's best left to one side for first timers. I then gave them the most important tip I could: do not simply rely on GPS for navigation in South Africa. Ever. Instead to hit google maps, google earth, etc... and have a really damned good notion of exactly where they'd be going and how exactly they'd get there before ever heading out on any particular journey lest one end inadvertently up in one of the exceptionally unlovely parts of the country where things can get very exciting very quickly.

Honestly, I deeply regret not having visited S. Africa when I had the money to do so in luxury. Have a love, or I should say tremendous respect, for lions/lionesses, and not for shooting them (although I wouldn't mind bagging a poacher or two). I could tell you more about the lion prides and coalitions in S. Africa by name, including their backstory and family history, more than I could my own ancestry (I've even had rangers online ask me for info. on certain prides and coalitions). Sadly the lion population will become even more decimated throughout all of Africa due to their Chinese invasion, ("Belt Road"..) for the lion bone trade. Lion farts are much worse than cows, at least by smell, so I wonder how long they will last under the WEF (although Sir Richard Branson has his own nice private reserve in Western Sabi Sands).

I thought they now require visitors to be jabbed if you fly in to country on commercial? Is that still true? Johannesburg had a horrible rape culture too if I'm not mistaken.

 

[acudaowner]

would have been more impressive if you had pics of your

your hired guides to carry all your supplies still glad you had a good time and made it home hopefully well .

 

[eflyguy]

I grew up there, and have friends still living there - mostly because their currency does not afford them the ability to leave. The ones that could, did. One of their sons committed suicide at 20, as he felt there was no future for him as a young white male.

It is a beautiful country, and if you have the financial means, you could live quite well.

 

[striped1]

If I were to live in Africa it would be in a region that is practically uncontrolled by any government. Then you meet up with the local warlord and reach an understanding. Then you further cement the relationship by buying a few AKs, PKMs, and RPGs and you are good.

I have done this to some extent several times while working for the USG and it is surprising how easy it can be.

now this sounds like more information could be very interesting.

 

[spamassassin]

Honestly, I deeply regret not having visited S. Africa when I had the money to do so in luxury. Have a love, or I should say tremendous respect, for lions/lionesses, and not for shooting them (although I wouldn't mind bagging a poacher or two). I could tell you more about the lion prides and coalitions in S. Africa by name, including their backstory and family history, more than I could my own ancestry (I've even had rangers online ask me for info. on certain prides and coalitions). Sadly the lion population will become even more decimated throughout all of Africa due to their Chinese invasion, ("Belt Road"..) for the lion bone trade. Lion farts are much worse than cows, at least by smell, so I wonder how long they will last under the WEF (although Sir Richard Branson has his own nice private reserve in Western Sabi Sands).

I thought they now require visitors to be jabbed if you fly in to country on commercial? Is that still true? Johannesburg had a horrible rape culture too if I'm not mistaken.

No jab required. Africa has, not had, a horrible rape culture. Lions in South Africa are, with the exception of a couple of national parks, farmed animals. They're not significantly different to cattle. Under typical circumstances, when someone wants to shoot one it gets fed, loaded on a truck and then dropped off in the hunting field then the hunter is trucked out and shoots it. The notion of lions being somehow especially immoral to hunt is ludicrous. Yes, poachers are a problem and we all agree on the appropriate treatment protocol for them, but he only reason there are any lions at all in Africa is because there's enough people that want to shoot one to make it economically justifiable to preserve the species. That's the case with basically all African game.

Luxury sojourns in South Africa, IMHO which anyone is free to disagree with, completely rob visitors of any chance to experience the country. It tears away what is truly fascinating and utterly alien experience and delivers a blatant fantasy devoid of any reflection of reality. Hunting with a luxury hunting outfit (you can identify them by the fact that they advertise) is as often as not as much hunting as would be doing a drive by shooting in a grocery store.

I grew up there, and have friends still living there - mostly because their currency does not afford them the ability to leave. The ones that could, did. One of their sons committed suicide at 20, as he felt there was no future for him as a young white male.

It is a beautiful country, and if you have the financial means, you could live quite well.

That's one of the reasons that I selected the country as my retirement location. Dollars go ridiculously far.

 

[BCP]

Is there any country in Africa still where gun ownership is essentially free like the US?

I know many areas are defacto unregulated and those are interesting too.

Namibia you can own pistols, rifles etc and there are nice beaches and less crime than South Africa.

A lot of people do not realize how poor Africa is. Not uncommon to look at houses over there and see electrified fencing added to areas of the walls and roof to keep out burglars.

Living off the grid in the middle of nowhere sounds great until you have a medical emergency. It's bad enough in the USA if you are going down 40miles of washboard roads before your 1.5hr drive on a highway to the hospital, now imagine you get to the hospital and they inform you that the specialist you need to see is in the UAE lol.

 

[Fig]

Do you convert your money to Rands, or carry physical Green Backs?

A white farmer is killed every five days in SA.

Save South Africa's White Farmers, Activists Plead

The South African parliament is accused of tacitly supporting attacks on white farmers after it passed a motion which could see farmland redistributed without compensation.

www.newsweek.com

 

[BCP]

Do you convert your money to Rands, or carry physical Green Backs?

A white farmer is killed every five days in SA.

Save South Africa's White Farmers, Activists Plead

The South African parliament is accused of tacitly supporting attacks on white farmers after it passed a motion which could see farmland redistributed without compensation.

www.newsweek.com

I'm kinda jealous of OP, I'd like to have that same adventurous spirit. Except I'd go to Asia or South America.

 

[Fig]

AfriForum at UN: "South Africa is the Most Racist Government in the World"

Farm murders are on the rise in South Africa as the South Afrrican government walks out on a conference of the UN Forum for Minority Affairs. AfriForum spokesman Ernst Roets called the South African government “the most racist government in the world.” The conference was held Thursday and Friday...

www.thegatewaypundit.com

 

[Oldloser]

I accepted an engineering gig in SA about a couple of decades ago. Was to be a 3 month trip. Met my PSD and we were prepping to go when the guy I was to replace got whacked along with his PSD. It was a brutal, simple and elegant hit. But entirely preventable in many ways and I felt comfortable enough to continue the trip. The engineering firm cancelled everything and made plans to not renew its contracts in SA.

 

[eflyguy]

I mentored a high-school robotics team years back, one of them was from SA. His family relocated here after a random attack by natives on the kids standing at a bus stop. He watched his friends being gunned down for no reason.

I worked in a bakery with "blacks" and we all got along just fine. One of the girls constantly tried to hit on me. The head cook or whatever was a really great guy. Many times they did not show up for work, because if they did, their family would be killed by the ANC. Back then, it was common practice to douse old tires with gasoline and put them over their heads, then set fire to them. This is back in the mid-80's, and things have not improved.

 

[Oldloser]

now this sounds like more information could be very interesting.

Look up gold mining in the African bush.

 

[Ronws]

Here is some more useless trivia. In the movie "Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls," He is in an african village going through that ritual where he gets a spear. Those sequences were not filmed in Africa. They built the village and shot the stuff in Hondo, Texas.

Now, for some more ancillary trivia. Another famous person who lived in Hondo, Texas was actor John Hillerman. He studied hard with a voice coach to hide his deep Texas accent. Hillerman was the guy who played Higgins on the original "Magnum, P.I."

 

[spamassassin]

Do you convert your money to Rands, or carry physical Green Backs?

A white farmer is killed every five days in SA.

Save South Africa's White Farmers, Activists Plead

The South African parliament is accused of tacitly supporting attacks on white farmers after it passed a motion which could see farmland redistributed without compensation.

www.newsweek.com

I convert back and forth quite a bit but I mostly use Rand while in country. You can use low denomination dollars throughout most of Africa but in SA it's best to use rands. Zimbabwe has the US Dollar as a national currency because their racist government's policies destroyed their currency. There are periodicities within the exchange rate of the rand compared to the dollar which are predictable on time scales of 3-4 months so I spend a bit of effort to plan purchases there to happen at the times of year when it's most advantageous.

I'm kinda jealous of OP, I'd like to have that same adventurous spirit. Except I'd go to Asia or South America.

Dreams without planning and execution are just fantasies. If you have a dream or even just a desire the only thing you have to do to get there from here is to make a plan, set actionable and achievable short/mid/long term plans and execute on those plans. FWIW, I spent the last 25 years working paycheck to paycheck while the now ex-wife spent every bit of effort she could muster to keep us in the poor house through bad decision making and sloppy thinking that she'd elevated to olympic levels. I hold vows and oaths as deadly serious matters so I was prohibited by my own code of conduct from just divorcing her dizzy ass just for being a chronically unwise beyotch and moving on to execute on my life's goals. Thankfully, and in a comical exemplar of just how bad her decision making really is, she decided to cast aside her vows and divorced me and then she took her half of the proceeds of splitting the marital estate and pissed it away with exactly fuck all to show for it. To top it all off, in another example of insanely bad decision making, the dip shit let me get away with paying her spousal support for just 2.5 years and then washing my hands of her and all of her really fucking stupid ideas (which is all of them). I saw her several weeks back for the first time in some months and she had that single lock of magenta-ish dyed hair that is the hallmark of a self-deluding middle-class white woman who's gone and lost her entire fucking mind all at once. Bullet dodged.

 

[Cardboard55]

South Africa is sadly continuing its inexorable march towards chaos.

https://za.usembassy.gov/security-alert-u-s-embassy-state-of-disaster-declared-over-ongoing-energy-crisis-of-load-shedding-controlled-electricity-outages/

 

[ggmanning]

SA...from by far the largest economy on the continent in the early 90's to rampant crime and constant food, electricity, water, etc failures.

 

[spamassassin]

My maize fields are just about ready to be harvested. This is a bit over 6 hectares, the pic is from last month taken from a couple hundred feet up with a drone. The stripe in the just right of the middle is a few rows of sunflower. The next 3 fields over to the right are getting irrigation finished right now. Doing this in the USA is prohibitively expensive but in ZA, it's still something you can pull a profit from once you hit a certain minimum economy of scale. We're scrambling right now to get a hammer mill and thresher delivered in time for harvest.

 

[NH4X]

Dreams without planning and execution are just fantasies. If you have a dream or even just a desire the only thing you have to do to get there from here is to make a plan, set actionable and achievable short/mid/long term plans and execute on those plans. FWIW, I spent the last 25 years working paycheck to paycheck while the now ex-wife spent every bit of effort she could muster to keep us in the poor house through bad decision making and sloppy thinking that she'd elevated to olympic levels. I hold vows and oaths as deadly serious matters so I was prohibited by my own code of conduct from just divorcing her dizzy ass just for being a chronically unwise beyotch and moving on to execute on my life's goals. Thankfully, and in a comical exemplar of just how bad her decision making really is, she decided to cast aside her vows and divorced me and then she took her half of the proceeds of splitting the marital estate and pissed it away with exactly fuck all to show for it. To top it all off, in another example of insanely bad decision making, the dip shit let me get away with paying her spousal support for just 2.5 years and then washing my hands of her and all of her really fucking stupid ideas (which is all of them). I saw her several weeks back for the first time in some months and she had that single lock of magenta-ish dyed hair that is the hallmark of a self-deluding middle-class white woman who's gone and lost her entire fucking mind all at once. Bullet dodged.

Not to make lite of your past predicament ,I've been there ,too .But should I read the above in a proper English ,German ,or Aussie accent . May I suggest you write a book.......you certainly have a way with words

 

[spamassassin]

Not to make lite of your past predicament ,I've been there ,too .But should I read the above in a proper English ,German ,or Aussie accent . May I suggest you write a book.......you certainly have a way with words

It's really best if you start out in an Oxbridge accent and then bounce randomly between that and a California surfer accent, a southern Arkansas hillbilly drawl and then toss in random verbiage choices that originate in Aussie/Kiwi/Boer dialects of English and include the relevant accent for each word so selected.

I take your reply as a compliment. If you think the way I write is interesting, you should see the way I speak. It's quite similar but I don't take such pains to avoid words which people might have to look up when simply speaking. The whole matter is a cautionary tale about the pitfalls of parents admonishing their children to hit the reference books when said children have a question which their parents lack an answer for. If the sprogs take their parents up on the suggestion then their parents will have not only ruined their child's dating life for decades to come and they'll have made a pretty good fist of guaranteeing that nobody will ever have any idea what the fuck their kid is getting at in the first place.

 

[Darkride]

Went over to work out some details of my impending retirement to the dark continent. While I was there I had the opportunity to take a red lechwe. Normally one of these would be simply too expensive but a good friend hooked me up with a hunt at a price I could not afford to scoff at. Taken with a .308win Sako wearing a USO optic and for the first time in my hunting in Africa, the rifle was not suppressed. Just a bare muzzle. 2 in the shoulder using Nosler Accubond's. The first one thoroughly disconnected the on-side shoulder bones from the rest of the constituent parts of the bugger and set the old boy's handbrake. The 2nd shot, while possibly being not entirely necessary, unburdened us of the whole "chase me, chase me" ritual and disconnected the heart from the other parts that were still connected to each other. When I got up to it, both front feet were over the head between the horns like it was expecting to be cuffed. Clearly it was feeling guilty about something. Chalk up one more hide and skull and another good time hanging out with friends.

Side story: South Africa is one of those special places where it's just safe enough across enough of it to be relaxing while being just off the rails enough to be properly fun and exciting. Upon landing in Johannesburg I was seated in the plane such that I was surrounded by 3 middle aged german couples who'd never been to any part of Africa before much less South Africa. It's all perfectly fine as long as you don't do anything truly stupid. Their whole trip had been planned by one of the gals who'd brought along the thing she used to plan the trip: a guide book which mentioned all of the neat stuff while mentioning exactly none of the realities of the situation. I glanced through at the sticky note'd pages for the hotspots they planned on visiting and noticed that the book was, if not directly misleading, clearly written by someone that probably enjoyed surprise buttsex a good deal more than most would. The Germans saw my taken aback-ness and asked for any tips I might have to add. As it was about midnight when we landed, I suggested that they get a room at one of the hotels on the airport grounds rather than go galavanting around Joburg after dark. They looked stunned, as if my concern for their probability of living long and happy lives was somehow a distinctly paranoid delusion. Because someone further forward on the plane was being arrested for being a drunken dick to the cabin crew we had a good bit of time to chat and I think that I and a friendly local who'd joined in to echo my admonition to exercise special caution after dark had finally managed to convey that while many parts of South Africa are quite nice and the people generally lack in true malice with most being friendly in a burglar-ish/beggar-ish kind of way; especially the Western Cape province which is still exceptionally nice in most spots and the people very warm and friendly with very little burglar-ish/beggar-ish overtones, Joburg is one of the more unlovely parts of Africa generally and it's best left to one side for first timers. I then gave them the most important tip I could: do not simply rely on GPS for navigation in South Africa. Ever. Instead to hit google maps, google earth, etc... and have a really damned good notion of exactly where they'd be going and how exactly they'd get there before ever heading out on any particular journey lest one end inadvertently up in one of the exceptionally unlovely parts of the country where things can get very exciting very quickly.

Have you ever read Peter Capstick? Lol you write just like him. Which is great!