Culture Shock Co-morbid with Bureaucratitis

Welcome Home!

Since 1989, I’ve made many two- to three-month-long forays “back home” to KZN from California. After my most recent foray unexpectedly extended from three to six months, I suffered a dose of culture shock co-morbid with a dizzying dose of, well, let’s call it bureaucratitis.
Culture shock is a state of critical assessment, psychological discomfort, even alienation that follows the initial euphoria a traveler experiences with immersion into exotic places, people, and things. It has an incubation period of three to four months in the unfamiliar or foreign place. It’s neither contagious nor terminal and the traveler slowly adjusts to and accepts her new circumstances. 
Bureaucratitis is an acute state of anxiety, high blood pressure, and disorientation caused by reluctant visits to a local municipality or post office. Bureaucratitis worsens with an impending visit to the Department of Home Affairs.

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Comrades Marathon

"Something there is doesn't love a wall"

June 10, 21,500 registered competitors ran the 90.184 km (56 mile) Comrades Marathon. This year’s race, the 93rd, was a “down run,” meaning runners started at Pietermaritzburg’s City Hall. Most of the route follows what was once Old Main Road. 

Leaving the city, runners travel along Polly Shorts (Ashburton), through Camperdown and Cato Ridge, past what was once my home (see red print on map), along Harrison Flats, up Inchanga Hill… well, see the map for the full route that finishes at Durban’s Moses Mabhida Stadium.

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