Exchange and Mart…

CHRIS BENNETT has been checking the progress of the lower South Coast.

I AM most grateful to a kind reader in Munster who, in response to my observation about the lack of knowledge of our continent among young black people, sent me a fine, large laminated map of Africa, showing the political divisions that comprise the continent’s countries.

As someone once said, more or less, you can’t do much about where you are going if you have no idea of where you have come from.

I gather that the map is now displayed on a wall of a classroom in the high school at Nzimakwe, near Munster. I also heard that the teachers were as fascinated as the pupils to learn where Libya, Egypt and Tunisia are; but maybe that was wishful thinking.

I have always been fascinated by history; it was one of the few subjects at which I did tolerably well at school. The others were English and geography.

Much of history, of course, is trivial; but much is not. On the trivial side an interesting article caught my eye in the London Telegraph this week.

In the City of London, the small area (one square mile) from which the great metropolis of today grew, and which is today the heart of the world’s biggest financial exchange, there is a number of very old alleys, or small, narrow passageways, in which you will find financial offices and, occasionally, wine bars.

The wine bars of today are the successors to the coffee houses of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This point was made in the Telegraph article:

“Change Alley was once home to a number of fashionable coffee houses, including Jonathan's and Garraway's, both of which are commemorated by plaques. Speculators often met at a coffee house to buy and sell - so many, in fact, that it was eventually suggested that Jonathan's should be re-named the Stock Exchange. And so it was.”

For me it is gems of this kind that are the sparkle of history. Who on earth would have asked from whence came the term stock exchange?

Also this week the economics commentator Mike Schussler, interviewed on etv, made a number of considered observations (he had clearly stated that he was not a specialist in education) about the lack of technical training in this country. His implication was that it has now reached problem status. Not, you will note, issue status.

He claimed that the teachers of maths and science in Zambia were of a higher calibre than those in South Africa. That should get a few educators (another buzz word; the word teachers had no issues) on the South Coast sitting up and taking notice. It should; whether it shall is another matter.

There seems to be a bit of a flutter in the dovecote in this part of the world, the lower South Coast.

I gather from the more informed of my moles that work has started, albeit quietly, on the conversion of the R61 into the N2, a not inconsiderable task.

Much has been made of this project in recent years’ editions of this newspaper. My colleague Judi Davis has worked assiduously to keep readers informed of whatever progress may appear to be taking place.

Now, I gather, the work has started. Disruption is inevitable; but then so is progress. Perhaps we should not get too worked up about something which, for whatever reason, is also inevitable.

CB

15/4/11