Moving from the cosy confines of wherever you call home to the strange and wonderful (or initially sometimes far from wonderful) ways of a new land, a new people and a new culture, is certainly no easy task. In fact, it rates very high on the ladder of the most stressful thing we do in our lives.
But one of the best ways to minimise the hassles, inconveniences and insecurities we all feel when surrounded by things strange and new, is to be as well-informed as possible about each aspect of the life we are about to begin.
Being a born and bred South African who has had the privilege of living and working in a wide variety of foreign countries and cultures, I am only too aware of how the initial difficulties seem insurmountable: the smallest setback can seem like a major calamity in those early days. But once you are an old hand, you can rest assured you will look back at those tetchy moments in stunned amazement and with a large dose of merriment.
I hope reading this book will give you a little insight into who we South Africans really are, how we live and how we have changed. I hope it will be enough of a taste of the Rainbow Nation to make your stay, however long or short it may be, a positively memorable one.
Writing this book was no easy task, but for the first edition I had the assistance of my mother, Jan Rissik, whom I thank for all the hours of research she did for me, for reading some of my copy and bouncing ever more ideas off me. Now, more than a decade later, I hope this fully updated, new edition again captures the spirit of a very different country. My great appreciation and thanks is extended to everybody who has helped me put this book together—wittingly, deliberately, or quite unintentionally by simply being South African.