WE ARE OKAY- But sickened...

Hey Everyone,

Like I mentioned, neither of us is in a particularly good mood today.  In short, we stayed in and slept Friday night because we arrive so late into town.  Last night, we decided to go out to a club because that is the main reason we stopped in Port Elizabeth which is a city of 1.4 million and the last city we will be in until we reach Durban.  The "Wild Coast" will be towns of 2000 people or less.

The club was fun enough, and by the end Ozell and I were both having some fun and in a good mood.  However, when we left, Ozell was approached by three guys (who were not in the club and just hanging around outside) for a cigarrette.  Ozell, being sick of having to give cigarrettes away to people who don't even ask for them but rather demand them, told the guys "No." forcefully.  Well, we didn't realize at the time, but they were never really interested in a cigarrette.  They were interested in determining whether we were locals which they immediately realized that we were not because of our accents and because we could not speak Xhosa.  They continued to verbally harrass Ozell and me, but Ozell more so.  All we wanted was to go home.  While Ozell was verbally arguing back and forth with them, we were also looking for a taxi.  There were NONE around.  This was a big disappointment for us.  The whole situation could have been avoided if there was just a taxi there.  We tried to extricate ourselves from these three guys.  At this time we were still close to the club.  A little before we were accosted by these guys, Ozell tried to use a phone inside the club to call a taxi from the company whose number we were smart enough to bring.  Again to our amazement, the club did not have any sort of public phone, and they did not want to call a taxi for us.

Now we needed a taxi.  I don't think either of us felt at this point that we were endangered of being physically assaulted.  It just felt like these guys wanted to fuck with us.  That was our mistake and naivety.  I can't explain it or our decision to then walk about a block down from the club (but within site of it) and use the only public phones we saw to call a taxi.  They followed behind us.  When Ozell tried to make a call, one of them started to physically push him.  Another started to get into it with me.  The one guy engaging Ozell started to get even more physical and throw punches.  Ozell and I were still just trying to get out of the situation.  I don't exactly remember the full details of what happened next.  No, i didn't black out.  Everything just happened so fast.  Ozell was fending off punches and strikes from one guy.  I was engaged with the other.  Then I broke away from my guy and tried to grab the guy fucking with Ozell.  Then that guy turned his attention towards me and struck me on the side of the head once.  This at least allowed Ozell to get away from this guy.  I was able to back away also, but now the guys started picking up rocks and throwing them at us.  Actually, I think Ozell got struck by a rock before he was able to get away from the one guy.  I didn't get hit with a rock until we were at least not in arm's length of any of them.  I got struck by one rock in the throat and have a mild bruise and abrasion.  I also caught hit with a rock in the back of my left shoulder when we had turned to start running back to the club.  That has left a cut and bruise.  I was scratched on the side of my face by the one punch which landed on me.  In general, I came away from this with minor injuries.  I may have a couple of small scars depending on how my cuts heal.

Unfortunately, Ozell suffered more severe (although not life or limb threathening) injuries.  In the grand scheme of things, his injuries are also minor, but they will take a longer time to heal and get fixed.  Plus one of his injuries will cost us some money to get fixed.  The most aggressive guy took on Ozell so Ozell suffered more landed punches.  Unfortunately, one of those was up against the side of his head and most likely busted his ear drum.  :(  That will take a couple of weeks to get his hearing back to normal.  And we may need to see a doctor if it does not improve by the time we reach Durban.  But the worst injury was when Ozell took a rock to the mouth.  This chipped one of his front teeth and cut his lip pretty badly.  We got the bleeding to stop when we got home, but the tooth will need fixing.  I think that even though it is chipped badly, it is not down to the nearve or anything so he should not have to fear decay or infection.  But besides his pride in his great smile, there is the comfort issue or having a jagged tooth in your mouth.  We hope to maybe find a dentist in Johannesburg that can fix it.  The problem is that it will require a cap or crown which means that they will have to send a mold away to make the new tooth.  This is most likely delay our travel plans significantly.

And these guys didn't want or take anything.  Never demanded our money or anything else besides the intial cigarrette which was only their foray to determine whether we were local or not.  All they wanted to do was to beat some people up.  Very disgusting.  :(

On top of that, we were able to get away from these guys because the only taxi we saw all night happened to turn the corner right when we were running away.  We were able to get into the taxi and get home, but it was unmetered (we didn't care at the time), and he charged us double what it cost us to get there!  Then, when I actually expressed my disgust to him and declared that he ripped us off, he called me a liar and said that this is why we got beaten up!  What a fucking asshole.  Prick.

So, we are going to be happy to move on out of this city.  Unfortunately, this experience can only feed our disappointment with some of the locals we meet.  It really makes it difficult not to see only the worst in any stranger we meet.

I WOULD LIKE TO ENSURE ALL OF THOSE WHO MAY READ THIS AND START TO PANIC THAT WE ARE ABOSOLUTELY FINE AND SAFE NOW.  AND WE WILL HEAL COMPLETELY FROM OUR INJURIES WHICH IN GENERAL ARE PHYSICALLY MINOR ALTHOUGH EMOTIONALLY MORE SEVERE.

Bye for now,

Sean