Dar Es Salam and Johannesburg both have lovely compounds.

Some encompass several houses and some just a single dwelling the size of the Spelling home in LA. Hard to imagine living that way but in Dar we stayed overnight with a family (friends of Amy S-G who moved to Africa 5 years ago from the States) who explained that it’s just part of the landscape in Africa. Our stay in Dar was short – less than 12 hours really – which was a shame because I felt Lisa and I could have spent hours and hours talking.

Once in Johannesburg, we saw the same set up. Houses surrounded by electric wire, full time sentries out front. The strange thing is, we never saw any activity that would imply a high crime rate. No gangs of menacing youngsters anywhere! Why all the wiring? I’m told there is a good deal of burglary. Case in point: Desmond Tutu’s house was robbed. A group of youngsters made off with his electronics and his Nobel Peace Prize. Luckily, the kids parked their van outside a policeman’s home and when his partner came to pick him up for duty, they noticed the boys, made the arrest, and returned Tutu’s Nobel prize to him.

Here in Cape Town the houses are wired. The house we are staying in has electric fencing plus a panic button in the kitchen and in the master bedroom. The button calls a security company that sends armed sentries to the house. I am pretty sure I’d be more frightened of armed sentries storming the house than of burglars making us hand over cameras, computers or cash. But maybe violent crime is prevalent?

So I looked at crime stats just so I would know how tightly I should watch the girls, the rental car and the house. Click here if you are interested: http://www.crimestatssa.com/

I’m no statistician and I didn’t boot up the SAS software to model these numbers but the data on the few neighborhoods where we have been (or are likely to go) show little if any violent crime and with all crime steadily decreasing with a slight one year uptick in 2007-2008. Two stats that do show growth are drug-related crime and DUI. We don’t plan to be involved in either so my mind is at peace on the issue.

Safe and sound from Cape Town…