How many of us has decided that the grass is greener on the other side, for me it was living in Johannesburg what got to me is the stress of living there finically, and also the crime that happened to me, and the pollution, that made my son who was still a baby at the time sick with allergies.
So when I got a opportunity to move out of there I did. In les than a month we picked up all our stuff and left for Port Elizabeth. I have now been in the windy city for 8 years ,and now and then I get the urge and think What was I thinking!!!!
Port Elizabeth is one of the places in the country that I can truly say is one of the best places to say in South Africa even if you don’t earn a lot of money, there is a lot of things you could do to keep yourself busy , that you don’t have to pay for unlike jhb were you basically start paying once you leave your front door , over here you can go to the beach or take a coastal drive, or shoot down to some of the local rivers to go do some fishing , over here the municipality, arranges events like the opening of the season, with a huge fireworks display , you have happy valley witch is dolled up over December periods with one hell of a impressive light display for the children .
Here is the down side, the weather in winter is to cold and miserable to go outside, even now in October we have maybe had one day a person could have braaied over a week end, the People here are laid back , but this laid back attitude goes on even in the business world . the economy in PE is weak and lots of companies had to close down
And being laid back surely didn’t help. The People down here are friendly mostly, but they are because of this twofaced, and will talk about you around your back in a hart beat, and because PE is so small the whole city will know all about you .especially if they think you maybe charged them more than what was needed, they have no idée what it costs to run a successful business, and most local clients except for the multinationals wants everything for next to free , I guess that’s why a lot of companies here dint make it.
This has had a major effect in the industrial aria that I work in and some time when I drive down the road were I work and I see all the to let signs, it reminds me of all those fallen business people who didn’t make it, a friend and work college of mine went one day and counted the to let sighs in our road he came back with a figure of about 120 open factories in our road alone, before the recession you could not rent a factory in our street. Now if you have the money to throw away, you can pick and chouse, the locals explain it like this to me, when South Africa experience a boom time PE is the last city that benefits from the economic wave , but when South Africa goes into recession PE is normally the first place to feel the effect, they say it has always been like this
So you can say I am getting gat fol of working in a place were lots of people are sitting without work, I am getting gat fol of working in a economy were I could be the next victim of this downturn.
And I am gat fol of seeing people fail in business
So this brings me to think of how the economy in jhb is still buoyant, there is opportunities, and with that it brings economic security,
So what I need to know, what is the up side of staying in jhb except money
Disclaimer: All articles and letters published on MyNews24 have been independently written by members of News24's community. The views of users published on News24 are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent the views of News24. News24 editors also reserve the right to edit or delete any and all comments received.
