It’s amazing how good a bed can feel. We woke up to a gorgeous morning. We had breakfast out on the patio next to the negative edge pool. What a great way to start the morning!
We had our South African orientation this morning. We learned about our roles as delegates, some of the history of South Africa, and foundational facts about the country. There are 11 official languages in South Africa. English is number six as far as the number of first-language speakers. The infrastructure was built on mining. They have a refinery that provides 15 % of the country’s gasoline by converting coal to gasoline. HIV is very prevalent here, with an average of 35% of all South Africans being HIV positive. It is as high as 85% in some of the rural areas.
We learned of the social struggles in South Africa, particularly with the non whites. We learned that there are differences between Black and Colored people. The Blacks are people whose relatives were born here. Coloreds are those who immigrated to South Africa or come from mixed marriages. Colored people used to have ore rights than Blacks, but they never had as many rights at the white people.
One comment that stuck with me is if you are going to use the government hospital health services, you need to take your own sheets to the hospital.
This morning we met with Norman Kagan, a businessman in South Africa. He owns a transcription company and has been trying to get realtime reporters to come work in Johannesburg for even the summer. He had some great stories to share regarding hiring realtime reporters to work in the South African system.
There are no reporting schools here and his attempts thus far to start his own school have met with many obstacles, not the least of which is the language difference. It is extremely difficult for someone to do the mental processing necessary to write at high speeds when English is not your first language. His goal is to start a school with students working for his transcription company at the same time they are going to school. He will recruit English-as-a-first-language students who already have some type of degree.
Mr. Kagan has an ER firm that does a lot of work in arbitrations. They are able to provide an edited transcript within an hour of adjournment of the arbitration by transmitting the audio files over the Internet to three different typists in 20-minute segments. It is for this environment that he would like to have a realtime reporter. The value to the attorneys in that environment is the immediacy of the information. It is very rare that a transcript is needed after the fact.
We had a free evening tonight. Many of us chose to go to a restaurant called Moyo. It specialized in Africaans food. We sat outside in the most wonderful ambiance -- pretty lighting, music playing, beautiful weather. We had our faces painted in the Zulu tradition. The food and wine were spectacular.