NeHi

I am now an automobile owner in South Africa. My good friend Pat is moving back to the U.S. and needed to sell her car, a Daewoo Matiz hatchback. “NeHi,” as Pat calls it, isn’t exactly a hotrod – it’s got only three cylinders and it labors to get up some of the hills around here. But it’s great on gas (or petrol, as South Africans call it), and owning a car should save me a few thousand dollars in the long run – I’ll no longer be shelling out $400 a month for a rental and should be able to re-sell NeHi when it’s time to go home.

NeHi is also a good reminder of what’s really important – in this case, an efficient means of getting around as opposed to a status-symbol SUV that’s so common in my home country. Here in Cape Town, these boxy little economy cars far outnumber the big gas guzzlers. I’ve yet to see a Hummer, or even a Yukon or an Expedition – and their absence is a refreshing sight.