Thirty hours in Durban

After spending a week in Johannesburg working on a story about a controversial land case, I went to Durban on Wednesday. Durban's a relaxed, remarkably diverse city on South Africa's eastern coast. We were three -- me, a local freelance photographer named Shayne, and Bhargavi, who had some meetings for work as well.

The story we were chasing in Durban was about virginity testing, a traditional Zulu practice that the government wants to outlaw on the grounds that it discriminates against girls and violates their privacy. (Girls who do it say the testing promotes their culture and pride in abstinence.) With the help of a colleague in Joburg, I tracked down the Zulu woman who is known as the doyenne of virginity testing and called to set up an interview. She was more than happy to meet me, but I wanted to talk to some of the girls she tests. "OK," she said, and then uttered words I never thought I'd hear: "You come here at 2 p.m., and the virgins will be waiting at 2:30."

We rented a VW Chico, a car that appeared to have been engineered by sticking a rickshaw engine on a toaster, and drove 60 km to Pietermaritzburg, capital of the KwaZulu-Natal province, to meet said virgins. We wanted to see the park where they do the monthly virginity tests, so I, Shayne, the tester and three of her pre-selected virgins piled into the toaster and set off.

Shayne, a good travel companion and all-around badass (he races motorbikes and got his two front teeth knocked out covering protests in Joburg slums), was driving. The virginity tester wasn't great with directions, and the Chico couldn't handle the weight of six humans, so each time Shayne hit the brakes to make a sudden turn, the car kept coasting. Several times, I was sure we were going to hit something or someone, and I could just imagine the headlines in one of the sensationalist local Zulu publications: WHITEY, AMERICAN KILL VIRGINS. Fortunately, Shayne avoided disaster, we got our story, and we returned the virgins unscathed.

Today we had some free time in the afternoon and went down to the Blue Lagoon area for "bunnies" -- massive, hollowed-out bread loaves filled with mutton stew. Durban's got a big Indian population, and bunnies were a staple food for them during the apartheid years. Naturally, these things are ridiculously spicy, and within a few bites my nose was running, my face was flush and my diet Coke was downed. Both the Indians were outdone by the white South African, who didn't break a sweat. If my mom is reading this, she's no doubt shedding a tear.

We couldn't finish all the food (Shashank doesn't like spicy mutton), so Shayne packed up the leftovers as tightly as possible, put them in a plastic bag, tied the top and placed it in a trashcan where a hungry person would be sure to find them tonight. A nice gesture, but I think we should have put a couple of water bottles down there too.