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Visiting South Africa · Conversations: Special Guests with Preston Scott

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: If I passed the hour. It is the third hour
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: of the morning show with me and him and our
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: guest once again, a little more history, doctor Ed Moore.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: We're gonna go off the beaten path a little bit.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: We're gonna join Ed on his little venture he sent me.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: He sends me a text. He says, you know, we
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: can talk about America at War if you want, or
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: I've been on this amazing trip to South Africa, and
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: I mean it was incredible. It was the it was
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: the best trip in the history of life. And and
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: we could talk about that, or we can talk about
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: you know what we were talking so like YouTube. So
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: what am I gonna say to that? Good morning, Good morning?
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: How you doing South Africa? What you there?
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: Actually I went to a duck some limited banquet with
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: some friends and they had they do these all.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: Led by former Commissioner of Agriculture Adam Putnam, Yes.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: Sir, and they did do these auctions. And the auction
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: came up and I went, I'm going to see you
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: in that, and then they passed it. They went past it,
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: and so I called the runner over. I said, why'd
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: you go? We didn't think anybody's going to buy it?
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: So I asked him, Okay, go find out what the
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: minimum bid would be on it. He came back, told me,
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: and I went sold and got three friends. You cheapskate, Yeah, man,
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: well they do that and then you end up spending
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: a lot of money.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Oh sure, yeah. Yeah.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: But David Micah here in town and his son David
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: Micah we call him D one and D two of course,
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: and Marcus Edenfield and I four of us went to
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: South Africa on a hunt.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: What so the intrigue was to go to South Africa
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: on a hunt because you'd never been.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I've hunted pretty much my whole life. And and
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: it was like one of those what they call them
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: bucket lists kind of thing. Does love to go do that?
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: Like and nothing I've ever experienced as a hunter. I
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: mean it's you know, here, if I go out this morning,
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: I went in my front yard and there were two
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: deer grazing in my yard, and you know, you live
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: out similar to you're wandering around. It's like, oh yeah,
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: that's really cool. There. You go down any given road
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: in any place in South Africa, once you get out
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: of just barely out of say Pretoria and Johannesburger right
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: next to each other. As soon as you start going north,
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: you go, oh, look there's elephants. Oh wait, those are giraffes.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: So I mean the wild animals that you see on TV,
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: and then these shows are everywhere.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: It is a South Africa outside the cities then becomes
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: basically a Safari park.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah. You go from urban to very rural right away.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: I mean it's not like there's suburbs or whatever small towns.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: There's villages and small towns, and we could talk some
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: about the shanty towns. That was kind of a same.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean, clearly beyond the hunting, you were enamored
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: enough by South Africa to want to talk about it.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well we David d One and I went earlier
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: and we took some tours and saw three of the
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: nine provinces. We were pretty much in the north and
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: just got to experience all kinds of things. We went
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: to an elephant preserve where they bring wounded and damaged
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: elephants and got to interact. I mean, nothing like having
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: an elephant when it's trunk right over your shoulder, whether.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: It's knowing that it can squeeze your head like a
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: melon anytime.
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: There was this really big boy and they wanted you
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: want to do a picture with her? Yeah, So I
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: walk up and I stood right up next to it.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: And there's nothing like having an elephant lean into you picture.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: Oh my god.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: I mean, you know, it's like you can't push back.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: And you can't quantify how big it is. They're huge. Yeah,
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: they're huge, and we do that.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: We got to interact with some big cats. A big
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: male lion that was behind a cage, but you could
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: reach through the cage and actually pet him and rough
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: up his fur. He was like a big house cat, honestly,
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: Gonness rubbing on the fence coming up, he.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: Got clearly raised in captivity.
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: He's been around it long enough. You don't put your
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: hands through. Where there was a female laying there, and
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: the guy said watch the female, because female, come on,
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: bite your hand off. But this big guy just liked
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: you rubbing his back and he would arch his back
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: or the house cat. Yeah, it just really cool stuff
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: like that. We went to Pelansburg National Park, which is
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: everybody here has heard of Krueger. Pelansburg is west of
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: their huge place, tens of thousands of acres.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: And so and it was winter.
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: It's winter there. Yeah, and we'll talk a little bit
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: about geography. Map makers make maps wrong. I mean, when
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: you see it, they usually tend to spread them out.
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: Africa he's made smaller and it's about the same height
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: as South America. South America actually goes about seventeen or
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: eighteen hundred miles further south towards Antarctica. So South Africa's
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: up a bit to go around the Cape. There's a
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: lot of ocean there. So it was winter and not
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: really too much unlike ours in the upper thirties in
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: the during the night and early morning. But yeah, seventy
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: degrees by midday.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: Definitely channeling little doctor d Moore with his music here.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: This is definitely your speed. I know it's not your style,
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: but it's your speed, Doctor Dmore with us talking South
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: Africa and a recent how long did you go?
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: We were gone about twelve days.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So was that the right amount of time? You think?
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: No, you could spend a lot longer there. Say, we
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: only visited three of the nine provinces. We didn't go
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: to the east around Durban at all, down into the
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: south around Cape Town. In those areas you see a
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: lot of South Africa and the news of late because
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: of some radicals taking over some of the farmland, and
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: we didn't see any evidence of that. It's an interesting place.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: It's the first time I've really been to a country
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: that I was in a distinct minority whites or maybe
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: seven eight percent of the population, about eighty one or
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: eighty two percent black, and about ten percent what they
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: call colored, which is mixed race, and a very small
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: maybe two or three percent Subcontinent Indians there if you remember,
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: Mahama Gandhi was there, So there's a population there. It's
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: the dynamics of the country right now are really mixed.
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: I mean you have urban areas that were very modern,
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: paved roads, you know, I mean everything. So it's a
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: real combination of First World and third World, you know.
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: So they classified as they don't use that much anymore,
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: the term second World country. That was more referred to
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: Eastern Europe and stuff. But it's a real blend. And
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: the poverty rate is very high. More than half the
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: people live below the poverty line there. It's unemployment is
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: somewhere in the mid thirties thirty four percent or so. Unemployment,
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: So it's poor in their areas, and they have these
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: areas that are called you would refer to them as
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: shanty towns or squatter settlements. Once you get out of
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: the cities quickly, there are these communities. I mean it's
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: like a village that are just made. The houses are
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: made of scrap wood, scrap metal, corrugated.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: Probably six feet whatever they can find.
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: Whatever they can find. They can't put any permanent structures
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: on them, or they'll go in and raise them and
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: move them. But if they do these temporary structures, the government.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: Sort of looks the other way.
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it kind of looks the other way. And a
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: lot of it's on private land, and the private landowners
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: just go find a lot of the help comes from there.
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: A lot of the workers come from there. On the
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: hunt camp that we were in, the trackers, we would
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: go down and pick up the trackers from one of
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: these villages down there. That I could talk all day about.
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: These trackers is absolutely amazing. The skill level they have
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: of being able to track animals and find animals, it's unbelievable.
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: You just watch them and it's weird to watch them work.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: But the poverty. They're all outhouses, no plumbing, no water
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: going in. I'm not quite sure how they bring all
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: the water into these little communities. It's odd to look
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: at them. You see, you know, say a thousand of
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: these shacks with satellite dishes on almost all of them.
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: If they string electricity to them, they've got satellite dishes
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: and televisions and cell phonts. I mean, it's it's this.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: Real mix of life that is the luxury.
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, having a.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: As opposed to finding a way to have but you
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: can't put permanent water and so forth, because it's privately
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: on land.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: Privately on land, and they have them. The one that
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: the nearest to where we were is in the middle
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: of nowhere. I mean there's no town there that is
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: the town. So there's schools or Limpopo thirty miles away
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: or so those kind of things. The literacy rate though
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: in the country is about ninety five percent, so they're
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: on the move to do this. You have to keep
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: in mind that would appertite apartheid or apparthide whatever was.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: That was a late it's probably in the forties or
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: fifties where that got imposed. Prior to that, it was
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: sort of las fare and the universal suffrage didn't happen
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: until the nineties, so relatively recent. So it's a country
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: on the move. It's changing, but it's still it's heart
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: wrenching to see these villages with thousands of people living
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: in them.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: Twenty one past the hour, doctor edmore with me talking
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: about South Africa and his recent journey there, and I
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: said to you in the break, I think most Americans
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: view the African nations through the lens of how we
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: see America, and we see this, well, this is America,
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: and that's Africa, and all of the states, well they
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: have states, they just call them countries. But I think
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: we have that perception that they have this kind of
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: interconnectedness because they're all part of Africa. But you were saying,
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: nothing could be further from the truth.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: No, No, they're all just so very different. The countries
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: are very different, they're governed different.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: They aren't the majority of them Islamic.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: Oh no, no, Actually South Africa is eighty five.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: Christian excepting South Africa, but.
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: No, Christianity is pretty across all of the South of Africa.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: If you get up into the north, yeah, then you're
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: getting Islamic countries and then interestingly, even South Africa at
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: eighty five percent Christian there's blended into that. It's sort
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: of like the Caribbean islands. You know that there's local
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: kind of stuff that traditional religion. I guess you would
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: call it. That's sort of blended in, sort of like
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: what Saint Patrick did with the Irish. I mean, you know,
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: same kind of thing. But it's very strong. I mean
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: I would ask people, are you know, in different plays,
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: are you Christian? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, I mean it's very
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: and the language is interesting there as well. You've as
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: an American, you go to a place like this and
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: you feel stupid, okay because the lowest on the economic
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: ladder there people speak three languages. I mean, it's it's
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: just everywhere. I was one of the pH as. The
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: professional hunter had his two little boys that came to
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: the camp one day and they're like three and six
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: maybe or so. They speak Afrikaans, which is a combination
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: of Old Dutch and English, and they speak that. They
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: speak English fluently and a lot of them speak There
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: are twelve languages in South Africa.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: I mean you talk about are they regional?
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Tribal? Say, if you know, if we had time
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: to talk about the history of South Africa, hasn't been
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: a country country for very long. You know. The Dutch
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: came first in the sixteen hundreds and then the English
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: took over. They were focused on Cape Town and the south,
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: using ports to get around and inland were tribal. You know,
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: you have the everybody knows about Zulus and from movies
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: is what we know. But the different tribes controlled different provinces.
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: They are Orange Free State, which was Dutch controlled. They
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: had the Boer Wars and the eighteen hundreds, two different
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: Boer Wars that were tribes and the Dutch the settlers,
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: the Dutch settlers against the English. I mean, it's been
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: in conflict for a long time. So it's a relatively
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: modern nation in the sense of becoming a nation. They
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: didn't have universal suffrage, as I said, until the nineteen nineties,
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: so you know they're coming through that African National Congress
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: were the ones fighting against that apartheide to bring about change.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: Now I know it is apartheid, yeah, but you're saying it.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: I just want to make sure.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: I'm hearing the Dutch guys.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, so apartheid. Okay, tell me this because
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: I think it connects a little bit since these this
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: country Africa. The continent is made up of so many
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: different nations. Do they have an immigration problem?
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well they yeah, they do. We were in the
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: north and the three provinces to the north that are
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: bordered by Buttswana. And when you go up to that area,
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: you talk to the different people, well where are you from?
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: Did you grow up here?
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: And they just kind of look, okay.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: You're a terurist, I can tell you. And they're coming in.
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: They come in for jobs, come in for work, and
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: that's where a lot of the poverty comes from, if
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: you read on it. A lot of people come in there.
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: They come in for jobs and then they end up settling.
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: And they go first to these settlements or squatters villages,
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: and then they have their job, and then they lose
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: their job, and then what do they do. They don't
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: have transportation, they don't have a way out of there.
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: Going along the highways, you saw walkers all along the
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: highways out in the middle of nowhere, and you think,
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: how far is this? How far are they walking? You know,
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: and they're carrying loads and they're just walking trying to
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: get somewhere else. Public transportation is not great. But natural
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: resources and beauty like you've never seen in issues poachers.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: You hear about poachers. So we had a rhino run
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: right in front of our truck, missing its the made
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: of hair largely, but that big horn on the front.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: They trank them. They're going and trank them and cut
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: those off because the poachos will come in and kill
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: them and just cut it off and then leave the
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: rest of the animal lay there.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I've heard they're now going to literally kind of
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: sort of poisoning the thing so it's not worthy of
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: being taken.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: The object is to get rid of the horn to
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: preserve the animal. And the one that ran in front
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: of us had no horn on the front. You know,
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: it's kind of wait, it's missing something, and then you realize, yeah,
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: they took that off. We got charged by a heart
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: of elephants that was kind of cool on this back road.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: Oh I bet it was real cool.
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, a big mama elephant didn't like us, you.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: Know, and ears went out.
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: You can see the ears going out and waving, and
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: then all of a sudden she's running at us, and
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: the guy cranks up the truck and he's gone. He's
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: going exciting. You know, you think, okay, this like Disney
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: Did they stage this or no?
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: It was real.
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: Encountered her came around a bush and there's a herd
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: of Wildeby's and we're staying real quiet, and all of
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: a sudden behind us to the right, you hear a
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: snorting and a stomping, and and realize one of the
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: bulls had gone around behind and did not like us
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: being there. We're out in the bush, and then then
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: they all start stampeding, fortunately away from us, not towards us.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: That's good.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we saw hippos, we saw.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: You name it, we saw so you saw the real
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: man killers.
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well there are hippos.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: And and the buffaloe.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: Actually number one killer in Africa mosquitoes still well, more
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: people die from mosquitos than anything.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: So are you going back if you can't hunt?
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: I would, yeah, absolutely.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: Then there we should bring a camera, would it be
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: a photographer? Safari?
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: I did that this time. I've got amazing photographs. Yes,
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: it's worth doing. If I went back, I would see
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: more of the country, and I'd also go up into
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: Tanzania and go to like Victoria and see that kind
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: of stuff. But yeah, it's it's worth going. Direct flight
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: Now Delta is a direct flight.
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: From from Tallahassee.
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: No, you fly Tallassee International through Atlanta straight to Africa.
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: Fifteen plus hour flight from Atlanta to Johannesburg. And it's
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: the way to do it.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: That idea just nauseates me. Sorry, thanks for sharing your experience.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: It's great.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: Doctor edmore with us twenty nine past the hour