online dating in south africa: "the odds are pretty good but the goods are pretty odd"

or "ooh-ee-ooh-ah-ah ting-tang-wallah-wallah-bing-bang"

ten rand to whoever posts the next lines in each song above.

and sorry for the rocky and bullwinkle introduction.

as many of you know, i live in a small little granny flat and i'm still without a car of my own. using the company bakkie is a pain in the ass because it's a real chore to get in and out of the long steep driveway that i live at the end of. so my evenings have been pretty tame as of late. as paul simon would say, i've been taking my time but i don't know where.

in the meantime i've been spending time with virgilio but the bloke is leaving for a job site in richards bay (2 hours away) in may.

so enter the catalyst.

i joined an online dating service and told it to find me someone in maritzburg to show me around. it wasn't very long before my inbox was full of women from all over south africa wanting to chat and presumably show me around town.

let me tell you, the profiles that were showing up in my inbox were a great source of laughter and discussion and critiquing around the bridges department for days (tip: for your online dating pictures, if you're overweight, don't put a picture of you next to an elephant. should go without saying...).

being from a town near both the silicon valley and the birthplace of craigslist, online dating is something you might do without even giving it a second thought. not so here. maybe it's the high murder rate here, maybe it's the high rate of violent rape or maybe it's the aids everywhere but everybody cocked at least one eyebrow when they heard i was willing to put a picture of me online and say "email me!".

my interest was to find someone not just in kzn but within pmb. with that criterion (and one other criterion called "looks") i was left with only 2 eligible matches. i emailed them both and waited to see if i would get any response.

the first to email back was a very outgoing colored girl, joelene.

the second to email back, karyn, aka "kaz" was a petite shy blond who works as a computer administrator for stihl (think chainsaws).

here's where it gets (slightly) interesting:

the family i stay with had dinner the other night with the neighbors, the sampsons. during the course of the dinner, the sampsons started asking about the american living in their granny flat. y'see, the sampsons have a niece that had somehow developed a little bit of an interest in meeting me, y'see their two level home looks into the backyard here... this is how every healthy relationship should start.

the sampsons asked my landlords if they could get my email or phone number so their niece could contact me. the niece turns out to be the same joelene. joelene emailed me explaining that she'd talked to my neighbors and landlord about meeting me but this was still news to me because my landlords never got around to telling me about it until i asked them, "why does the neighbors' niece think we're being set up?"

both wanted to meet on sunday. kaz for early coffee. joelene for dinner and a movie. when we spoke over the phone joelene was, simply put, a riot. she wanted to take me ice skating in durban.

i'll save you the details of the early morning coffee date with kaz. little chemistry. only similar interests. ended with us talking about going on some hikes with some pmb hiking groups.

joelene picked me up at my place and we were off to durban to go ice skating. i don't know how often this happens but joelene looked 1000 times better in person than in her pictures. to joelene's credit she took control of the day because god knows i didn't know where we were or what to do anywhere. i was kicking myself the whole time for not taking my camera because this ice skating rink would have been worth taking pictures of. just like back home it was full of teenagers on dates and kids having fun learning something new. joelene and i were older than anyone else on the ice by at least a decade. this girl was clever enough to plan a date where we'd have to hold hands the entire time. not clever enough to anticipate me throwing her off balance and belly-down onto the ice.

maybe diabolical would be more accurate. after ice skating we jumped in the ocean (in full clothes) which required that we dry off by walking down the shore huddled under the one towel she brought.

we missed the movie because we were busy cleaning out her remote entry keys which went in the ocean with us. joelene didn't mind because she didn't want to see a movie about people flying themselves into the sun. she wanted to see the bloodfest '300'. i obliged. she cried at the end. her aunt (whom i still haven't met) told her not to keep me out too late so after the movie we made plans to meet up for coffee on tuesday.

monday i promptly called her to change to monday so that i could watch manchester united play ac milan. she then changed coffee to dinner at her place. wine led to her (and me...) belly dancing. turns out she's a damn good belly dancer and not afraid to throw it around. the wine also led to some significantly inconvenient "bite" marks on my neck. boo hoo for me.

to hide the marks, i wore my white dress shirt and a company tie. i thought i would get a lot of compliments for dressing nice at work. instead i got asked 5 times if i had a job interview somewhere... or if i had to go to court. oh well.

now here's the good part: joelene is leaving town for most of the five day weekend coming up. why? she's a cancer survivor. she going to joburg to see a doctor. a witch doctor. and no i'm not kidding and neither is she. when i brought this up to bridgit and virgilio i learned that virgilio's home country of mozambique has decent witch doctors also. virgilio pointed out that if joelene is going all the way to joburg for a witch doctor, she must really need it.

and to answer the question on everyone's mind: "no, joelene isn't jewish."

next: NONE OF YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US

culture shock really becomes evident when you sit down and try to talk about the hanky-panky. certain expressions you've been using since growing up, you suddenly realize are american terms. "i got to second base last night" means a whole lot less to people that have never heard of mickey mantle.

i'll have to find out if there are cricket terms used to describe the extent of one's heavy petting... cricket has terms like "maidens", "hitting the stumps" and "hat trick". to me those all sound like first or third base.

nonetheless, having official tea times really provides a venue for a narcissistic story-teller like me. so the pressure is on to collect stories that will entertain those abroad as well as the locals at bcp. the only universally intriguing subject seems to be adventures in online dating. i'll go with what works.

last monday morning, virgilio knocked on my door and asked about me weekend. it turns out that while i was shoulder deep in the ocean in durban, he was playing for his friend taylor's outdoor team (for the "babalaza (zulu for "hangover") league. virgilio played in the midfield and even managed to put in a goal. basil was astute enough to point out that at least one of us scored over the weekend.

tea time is also a good time to share highlights of my like, "i open this email from an old girlfriend in the states saying, 'check out my sunburn' only to find the pictures she's sent show her sunburnt... and naked.

"now THAT'S why i need 500 MB / month."