Starting to feel at home in Joburg / Braai with neighbors / Kruger National Park trip

After Cape Town, we were ready to hit the ground running for our first full week of audit work now that onboarding and introductions were complete. My client (glass company) has a 6/30 year end, so the substantive testing procedures are now in full swing.

We are also starting to feel more at home at our apartment in Johannesburg. Our complex is home to most of the secondees/foreign assignees for the Jo’burg office. We met the other foreign assignees from Canada (there are four of them in Energy & Resources) and Sweden (one in Forensic), and on Thursday we had a braai (Afrikaans word for barbecue) with them and some South Africans in our complex. We got to sample some of the local food and drinks, and I am very much a fan of South African cuisine. They all invited us to come watch the KPMG team play cricket next week, so we are very excited about that.

The weekend excursion this week was a trip to the Kruger National Park, a huge nature reserve that spans parts of South Africa, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe. The trip was about four hours straight east, and after arriving on Friday night we had a really nice dinner at our lodge. Saturday morning was definitely my favorite part of the trip – we arrived at the park gate at 4:30 a.m. for our safari! At 5:00 a.m. our game driver departed and we started looking for wildlife. Most animals are active at sunrise and sunset, so we were there at just the right time. We saw lions, elephants, giraffes, rhinos, and even a hyena. Our driver was also really knowledgeable, which made the trip that much better. That night we ate with some other South Africans from Johannesburg visiting as well, and we saw some game on the banks of the Crocodile River while enjoying some great food and company. Sunday included a scenic trip through the backroads of Mpumalanga, and we saw God’s Window, the Potholes, and the Three Rondavels, all of which had really breathtaking views. It’s hard to believe our experience is already half over, but I feel like we’re really taking advantage of everything South Africa has to offer.