English Explorer's Extremely Exciting Eshowe Expedition

 Logan had dropped me off at twelve. I had spent an excessive two hours unpacking, and spent my last rand on a toasted cheese sandwich for a late lunch from the 'Mama Zulu' cafe. There was nothing for it: I had to go shopping.
 So I put on my protective gear (my Bambisanani hoody), shouldered my rucksack, and, feeling very nervous, set off down the main street in the direction that I'd been promised would yield an ATM in a kilometre or so.
 Eshowe (or, as it should be written in Zulu, eShowe) is a country town. As Logan put it, 'It's not a one street town - maybe three or four.' As I walk along the road, I see: a KFC, funeral parlours, clothes shops, a KwikSpar, a scary bridge with only bolted sheet metal between me and the gorge below, litter, cracked pavements, a roundabout, cars and plenty of people.
 All the people are black. I feel terribly self-conscious. Nobody seems to be looking at me - maybe there are one or two surprised glances. One guy, because he's in front of his mates, says 'Hello, sweetie,' but I just ignore that. One woman, though, stares right at me. She isn't black, she looks Asian. She points to my hoody, and says 'Are you from St. Mary's?'
 Needless to say, this surprises me a lot. It turns out that she works at the Chennell's guesthouse, and so she's seen both of this summer's previous groups - the big group of sixth-formers and also the four teachers who spent a week each during July visiting Mnyakanya. She says her name is Nataya and she'll see me that evening at the pub.
 I feel my face break out into a spontaneous grin as I continue. The Bambisanani hoody gets recognised in the street! It encourages me so much that I dare to leave the main street and venture into an arcade. Here I find a supermarket. I make several mistakes, such as forgetting a basket on my way in, not taking the freshest bread, nearly taking out-of-date soup, but people help me each time. Strangely, with a heavy bag of shopping in my hand containing bread, pasta, peanut butter, 'Weet-bix', milk and powdered tomato soup, I feel a lot more at ease. I march back to the George Hotel with a ridiculous sense of achievement.
 In the car-park I meet Gladys, the cleaning lady. I met her earlier in the afternoon. 'Next time you go to town, you tell me, we go together,' she says. Then she goes round behind me and checks my rucksack. 'You be careful, you don't put purse behind you, you keep it here.' She indicates her breast pocket. My sense of achievement deflates a little bit. Was I just presenting myself as an obvious target? Well, at least I got away with it this time. Gladys seems worried I might get the wrong idea of eShowe as a hotbed of crime. 'There are crooks all over the world, you know,' she says. I nod, and go to put my hard-won groceries away in the hostel kitchen.