A reader asked about places to stay in Cape Town. Cape Town is my favourite SA city and Durban second. I travelled in SA many years ago but here are some suggestions.

The SA government tourist bureau had reasonable trips to the game parks. Go to your city library and check out all the budget books on SA get city maps from SA tourist bureau in your country. Find the location of places that interest you on map and write right on map the address, price, etc. I loved SA and think you will too. Do not be afraid of it.

The Jo’burg City Tourist Information Centre was wonderful. They gave me a map and marked on it the location of places to stay in my price range, how to get there by public transportation and I believe even phoned. I think I had taken some used postal stamps along and asked if anyone there collected stamps and gave them to them. While I stayed at the YMCA conveniently located next to Botanical Garden and I think took both sexes and also included breakfast there were many reasonable place to stay and with the good rate of exchange one can go more upscale if they wish. Also when I left SA I asked at the Tourist Bureau if they had any posters with animals I could have. I still have some hanging in my room.

Johannesburg and maybe even Cape Town had free bus tourist trips on Sunday I think sponsored by Chamber of Commerce each Sunday a different one. I brought elephant hair bracelets to bring back to States as gifts. They take hair from an elephants tail (a rather dangerous job) and make a bracelet. If you wear this you will never be attacked by tigers (not in South Africa – but maybe where there are tigers!) and they don’t weigh much in luggage. Some make these bracelets out of plastic and pass off as elephant hair. If you light a match to them I think the plastic will burn.

I took a reasonable several day sightseeing trip of Kruger Game Park (bigger than some states like Connecticut) that I booked in railroad station at SA tourist bureau there. If any globetrotters have had any military time I usually ask tourist bureaux the location of any military clubs. They are good sources of information, reasonable food and drinks and sometimes you being a visitor members will invite you to their homes of tell you of reasonable accommodations. As I mentioned in SA it was MOTH clubs (military order of tin hats from WWI), Comrade Clubs (British oriented), in Australia Returned Servicemen’s Clubs (all military veterans clubs have some people that were never in military!).

The Carlton Center (tall round skyscraper commercial building in Johannesburg had Soweto town sightseeing trips conducted by a tribesman in a pink bus. Money went to town of Soweto to help them out: reasonable and certainly unusual. In a nutshell go to the State run Tourist Bureaus or government tourist bureau in airport, find out public transportation into town. Have them mark on map location of their suggestions.

Happy Travelling TSgt Wilfred L. McCarty Rtd

If you would like to contact Mac, a 78 year old retired military, and extremely well travelled to boot, he is happy to answer any questions even if his information may be out of date. Mac can be e-mailed at macsan400@yahoo.com

The Miss World competition is still to go ahead on 7 December. Although 5 delegates have withdrawn: Miss Costa Rica, Denmark, Switzerland, South Africa and Panama there are still over 100 delegates to “compete”. The Nigerian Government, desperate to play down the controversy surrounding Amina Lawal's sentence, (having a baby out of wedlock (no penalty imposed on the father)) has given assurances that it would intervene to save her once the legal process has been exhausted.

Amina Lawal, meanwhile, is said to have asked participants not to boycott the Miss World contest because “a lot of resources had gone into organising the pageant and it should go ahead”. She reportedly told press: “I heard of the boycott threat, but I just think they should come because nothing happens without God's permission”. She also added that she has not been pressurised into speaking against the boycott.

Muslim groups are annoyed that part of the pageant is being held during the holy month of Ramadan. An official of one Muslim group in the city of Gusau said protesters were planning “black prayers” and a “spread of plagues of curses and bad luck on the Miss World organisers and participants”. (Perhaps they could organise some positive prayers and good thoughts for Amina Lawal.)

ThisDay, a Lagos based Nigerian newspaper recently published an article which said that the Prophet Mohammed would probably have chosen to marry one of the contestants if he had witnessed the beauty pageant, which Nigeria is hosting next month. This sparked off riots by thousands of Muslim youths who have rampaged through the suburbs of Kaduna, burning tyres, attacking churches and setting fire to buildings. Schools and businesses are closed, but meanwhile, Miss World soldiers on.

Update: after four days of violence, relief and civil rights workers say that more than 200 people are now known to have died in violence between Christians and Muslims in the northern Nigerian city of Kaduna. As the disturbances reached Nigeria’s capital, Abuja (and how many of you thought that Lagos was the capital of Nigeria) the venue for the Miss World competition has now been changed to London. It is estimated that more than 1,000 have been injured and more than 11,000 made homeless in the clashes. Civil rights activists said more than 20 churches and 8 mosques have been burned down in the city as well as a number of hotels.

The competition is scheduled to go ahead on 7 December, but in London.

President Obasanjo needs Muslim support when he goes to the polls in a couple of months’ time and does not want to jeopardise his chances of being re-elected. Where does this leave Amina Lawal? A vocal supporter of a contest that shows women in states of undress? Until Miss World has come and gone? And then what? How can this be allowed to happen in the 21^st century?