Saturday 18 July 2009

You know you're in Africa when....part 3


This is called a robot and not a traffic light. No seriously, that is what they are called over here. It is one of the little South African terms that everybody from overseas always laugh about.

Did you notice the cross with the red roses next to the tree? Another tradition here - I am not sure if it is done anywhere else. People erect crosses where their loved ones were killed in car accidents. Also, victims of our ridiculously high crime rate gets remembered in roadside memorials. This one is for a young man named Sebastian and for the almost 2 years that it has been standing there, it always has fresh red roses in a pot next to it.

To answer Debi's question at the last post - her outfit is her own combination of department store garments - no trade name this time. I tell you, fashion designer (although towards the more colorful and eccentric part) in the making

9 comments:

  1. Robots? interesting!

    Yes, we often see similar roadside memorials here in the US, too.

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  2. So cool that they are called Robots. Here in Alabama, some people do place crosses where a loved one has died. Sometimes they add flowers to the cross and I have even seen notes, teddy bears, balloons, etc.
    I love your "You know you're in Africa when...." posts!

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  3. Really!? A robot. Interesting.

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  4. A Robot? Interesting.

    We have those roadside memorials too. They have talked about limiting the size and style of them (some are really huge and fancy) because there is thought that they are actually causing more accidents by people being distracted by them. We have just seen far too many of these little memorials in our driving this last week :(

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  5. That is so neat that you live in South Africa! I have not met a blogger from there:) hello friend!

    Thank you so much for stopping by on my SITS day! That was great:)

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  6. Didn't know the robot thing. WE have memorials on the side of the road like that here and in Italy too.

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  7. Roadside memorials are common here.

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  8. Robot? My kids would LOVE that!!! I may need to start calling our lights robots from now on :)

    And yes, we have lots of road-side memorials here as well. Along with lots of fighting with the state as to whether they can stay or not. Sad :(

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  9. We have those memorials in America (well, Chicagoland area at least) but I think they're very strange. Why would you want to memorialize the place where they died? It makes more sense to me to celebrate and remember where they lived!

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So what's on your mind?