An overwhelming day of touring and history!

It is Saturday now, and I can’t believe I’m actually here! We had an early breakfast, continental at the hotel, and the whole group got on the bus and we were on our way by 8:30. Turns out they make scrambled eggs differently in SA, because this morning instead of scrambling the eggs and then putting them onto the grill, she cracked the eggs directly onto the grill and scrambled them with the spatula as they fried! Cool huh?

Anyways, we knew we were going to the Apartheid Museum in Joburg today, but we did not know we would also be taking an all-day tour around the Township of Sowato (pronounced Suwatu with their accent) with a tour guide named Alina who rode the bus with us and talked along the whole ride. We went everywhere from the poorest areas, where large families live squished into little shacks made of tin sheet metal and live with the pigs, to the wealthy neighborhoods with beautiful brick houses, air conditioning, and swimming pools! We drove past markets where people shopped for fruits and vegetables, and Alina told us that malnutrition is not a big problem in SA or even in the poor parts because fruits and vegetables are so abundant and cheap. We saw many historic places around Sowato, including the house of Nelson Mandela, a monument dedicated to the new voting rights, and the memorials and sites of the 1970’s police shootings of protesting children. We walked through a famous church with amazing elaborate stained-glass windows portraying many events throughout history, and in the ceiling of the church we could still see bullet holes.

We ended the day by going to the Apartheid Museum, as if our day of culture-introduction was not overwhelming enough already. If you are not familiar with the term ‘Apartheid,’ it is basically the holocaust of South Africa. It was the mistreatment and killing of many black Africans in the early 1900’s that stemmed from a drastic inequality of human rights between blacks and whites, or European settlers of that time. So walking through the museum, watching the videos, seeing pictures and reading quotes and accounts was very heartbreaking, but at the same time it made me realize how far SA has come since then and how much they have had to go through to get to where they are today. It gave me hope for the country now and for the future.

If I could describe today in one word, it would be BEAUTY. Everything my eyes saw I just wanted to capture it permanently in my mind so that I could remember it forever, because everywhere I looked I seemed to not be able to look away. I think they call this the honeymoon phase of being in another country, but I don’t care, I loved everything around me. The people are absolutely beautiful, from the poor and toothless to the glamorous and wealthy, everyone wears a smile here. Their joy and love for both each other and their country really shows, and they are more than welcoming to us as visitors. As our bus drove through the Sowato streets, the people passing by would wave to us and smile until they were out of sight. People would wave to us even if they were 100 yards down the road, as if we were long-lost friends of theirs that they had been waiting to see for years. They would smile and jump up and down, wave their arms, come out of their houses, and watch us drive past as we all waved back through the lightly tinted windows of the bus. These people are absolutely beautiful from the inside out, and I have fallen in love with the way they live their lives. Since today is Saturday, everyone was out and about, and I quickly noticed that everyone was walking. Walking here and there, through the streets and neighborhoods, walking in the mall we stopped at, but not only were they walking, they were just slowly making their way from one place to another and not one person was in a hurry. Everybody seemed to be enjoying their surroundings and the company of the people they were with, and the time that it took them to reach their destination seemed very unimportant next to the relationships and conversations with people. I really am not exaggerating this, NOBODY was in any sort of hurry. Not one person in the city, and this brought a very obvious meaning to the term “T.I.A.” or “this is Africa,” referring to lack of punctuality.

The colors in this country are so wonderful, from the bright clothes the people wear to the art painted on buildings and sold on the streets, fruits in the markets, baskets balanced on the heads of women with babies on their backs, the colors of houses and advertisements, it is all so stimulating! They use bright colors everywhere, and it is such a beautiful contrast to the dark skin of the people. And speaking of skin color, it is a whole new experience being the minority in a community. That is something I am not used to, and it changes my mindset about my environment and my own image very much.

One of the things that struck me was the number of funeral processions we saw just driving around the city today. Our tour guide, Alina, pointed them out to us every time, and she did so very casually. There were so many that I lost count, and it saddened me so much how funerals seemed to be a very regular and normal thing here to the African people. This reminded me of the fact that South Africa has the highest percentage of HIV infected people in all of Africa, and to see that statistic all around the city today in the form of funeral processions made me realize just how real the issue of HIV is. The first of many, I’m sure.

I will close this extremely long blog entry by saying that the weather is so so good, or “shop-shop” the Africans would say while holding two thumbs up (it means good, and they say it about almost everything). Since it is summer here, it is a perfectly warm temperature with just enough humidity to make me wish I was wearing a flowy summer dress. In the middle of the day we had a thunder and lightning storm and it poured rain, but the warmth never went away! It is tropical and wonderful, and couldn’t be more perfect.


alex and i infront of our busa historical cone-shaped building with the human equality laws written in stonevendors in the squareno hurry to get anywhere...

a small snapshot of an enormous colorful fruit market


south african streets... they drive on the left side :)

the poor neighborhoods, where people ran out of their shacks to wave to our bus!

some of the beautiful childrena difficult museum to walk through, to say the least.