Still a bit tired, I awoke just after 7 a.m., and opened my hotel room curtains to see a beautiful garden sitting area, with lush green trees and grass. It was a delightful view for my first morning in South Africa. Going to breakfast was an offering typical In North American hotels, with some hot breakfast offerings and some cereals, fruits, and yoghurts, and so on.
In the lobby, I met with the team for our trip to the headquarters of our corporate office, but not before Marilyn gave us all gifts of wonderful German chocolates!
We set off for a day of experiencing Joburg and South Africa. Traveling on the roads here is a different experience than what is in Canada. Firstly, drivers don't use handsfree phones, and don't hesitate to respond to a phone call while driving. Another difference from Canada is that people are riding freely, loaded in the back of pickup trucks, having more passengers crammed into a vehicle than there are seatbelts for. On this particular day, while riding around Joburg, just after 9 a.m., was a man wearing a dog costume in the back of a pickup truck, drinking Red Bull and smoking an ecigarette. Very strange (to me).
At many street intersections are people selling newspapers, and other items, like golf clubs, and I am not sure what else they are selling. I am not sure that I know anyone who would be looking to buy a golf club at and intersection.
Joburg is very cosmopolitan, and Marilyn calls it the Beverly Hills of South Africa, with upscale shopping and homes and cars. In addition to that, though, is barbed wire. I have never seen so much barbed wire or electric wire fencing in my life. It protects the boundaries of homes and businesses alike, and it is very prevalent. Joburg, and South Africa really is a melting pot, they say, and today we saw this in the mansions and expensive cars and shops, and mixed with squatters towns. More on that later.
We went to the Apartheid Museum, which was a lot of history that was terrible, terrible, terrible, but also history that was unbelievably inspiring in how people can stand together and beat down a system of oppression like that. Our tickets to the museum were randomly handed out, and visitors entered as a White or as a Non-White (I was a non-White). I highly recommend visiting this museum; it was very powerful and moving. The cafe there was called the Truth Cafe; the menu was written on a chalkboard, and
was my first real exposure to food and prices here. There were offerings like Bobotie and ostrich, and the prices were a bit surprising simply because for me glancing at it, I read it as $68 for chicken curry and rice, however it was 68 Rand, which is actually only $5.60 CDN.
In the cafe, and in the gift shop were some interesting 'pictures' that I discovered when I got very close to them, were not painted, but were crafted from beads. They depicted significant people in the movement against the Apartheid regime and laws, and I appreciated the effort and talent that went into the making of those beautiful pieces.
This museum and its presentation of an important history of South Africa left our entire group feeling numbed. We were so moved by the bad and the good, but it was a lot to take in, and it warrants another visit at another time. It is incomprehensible to me, that humans could have been treated so poorly by other humans. Some of it made me think about the segregation within my own country, of natives being taken from their families and put into schools far away, and how many were treated so poorly. The fight for rights and equality still goes on in Canada as well as South Africa, however there has been change in both places, positive change, and we need to continue to move in a positive direction. Until this point of the day, our team had been lively and engaged, excited and energetic, however the experience of the museum left us emotionally weighted, quiet, and deep in thought. This is something that I think all visitors to South Africa should see, to understand what happened here.
Nelson Mandela is memorialized all over South Africa as the hero of heroes. He is a true inspiration to me, and I encourage you to look up a Mandela quote today; I will commit to reading his book to learn even more from him, and be inspired.
From the museum, we traveled to Soweto, which is not a name of a city, but was derived from South West Township, and is a section that is known to have poor and rich. There were reminders of the World Cup from a few years ago, things like the glass soccer balls mounted on street lights.
And, as we have seen in other places, barbed wire, electric fences and walls, built around houses large and small. We saw an old set of structures, like rows of single story town houses, where people live for free, but at the cost of no amenities or maintenance, so the dwellings are run down and in need of repair. Across the road from this old development, is a new development, with new multistory dwellings with amenities, all brand new, but no one lives there. The new development was built with the intent to relocate residents from the old development, and they would not have to pay rent, but would have to pay for utilities and water. Apparently, for the people who have been living freely in the old structures, they did not want to pay anything, and refused to move it, and so the new structures are totally empty, and the old structures are inhabited.
One of our stops was at a squatter's town, where there are hundreds of old tin huts and boarded boxes that people call home (for lack of a better description), where a resident lead us through, explaining about life in such a place. He said that he wanted to lead us in peace, as friends, and not bring us back in pieces, and assured our safety. Without the guide, there is no way that we would have been able to experience such a close up and personal taste of this life safely.
As small as these homesteads were, each seemed to be bordered with a fence (with barbed wire, also!), as if to claim a certain space as their own, but no yard space was large; no yard space was medium. All were what I would call small. As we walked down a red dirt path into the area, we were followed by some children, who played and looked at us with curiousity as they hugged and posed, and flashed their beautiful smiles. We were welcomed into the home of a 55 year old sweet lady, who spoke about her life, and showed us around her two room structure (you could see the whole thing by standing in one spot). It was very old, and things were piled everywhere, however she did have a 'kitchen' table and a couple of chairs that our group squeezed around to listen to her story.
She had 'the luxury' of an outdoor tap line that she could get water from her own yard outside. Apparently you can pay someone to illegally tap into the town water, running a pipe underground to someone's yard; this was a convenience, to have a tap in her yard, so that she did not have to walk far to get or carry water. She had a propane burner and a kerosine (?) burner, that serves as her 'stoves', although she said the propane was very expensive. Her bed had worn and blackened bedding, and it would not be somewhere that I would like to sleep. She told us how her husband had passed away, she has two children, and she is looking for a new husband. She smiled at that that and laughed... did we know someone who would like to be her husband?
We were very blessed to have been given a glimpse into her home, her life, her experiences. We contributed some money as a donation from the group, as we have so very, very much, in our lives, and she has so little in material wealth. What she does have though, despite the poverty and conditions that she lives in, is happiness. She glowed. She conveyed a sense of inner peace that I don't see in many people that do have money. In that sense, she is richer than many of us. She was a true inspiration.
She was asked if she could sing us a song, and she sang the anthem, accompanied by our guide. It was sang in a lovely and gentle way, the notes were sweet and soothing, and touched my heart with its simple beauty.
We said our goodbyes to our generous hostess, and headed back up the path with our guide, where he stopped midway, and shared that he was glad that our hostess sang a song, but he had hoped she would have sung the Click song. You can google Click song, and listen to Miriam Makeba sing this... the singer makes clicking sounds as they sing... I thought someone was tapping on something behind us as our guide was singing, but it was him clicking with his voice. It was incredible to hear him sing this live, with his wonderful voice.
We bid adieu to our guide at the entrance to the squatter's town, safe and sound, and contributed some money to him as a group also. There were some vendors selling wares in the parking area where our van was, and I was drawn to a beaded doll, which I bought for 120 Rand.
We continued in the van from this deep experience on to another reminder of the struggle for rights and equality in this country: the Hector Pieterson Memorial. Hector, aged 12, was one of the first causalities of one of the uprisings in 1976, killed by a direct shot from police. A newspaper photograph by Sam Nzima was published in newspapers globally. This was a strange place for us, in that we had had a very intense day exposed to so much history, violence, poverty, and now we were at a memorial about yet another violent clash, and we were approached by a photographer. Most of us posed... that's what you do when a camera is pointed at you, but we had mixed feelings about this. Not everyone would come in the picture; it was too sad a time, this event. I did buy a copy of the photo, but it is bittersweet, and comes with a sadness, and confusing, conflicting feelings about what is right and what is wrong. The memorial was there to remind us of this sad event, but was also there to honour Hector and all who died in this struggle.
After a short time, we traveled to downtown Soweto, and stopped at Mandela House, which is where Nelson Mandela lived for some time before his imprisonment. We got there just as the staff was leaving, but our guide was persuasive and presented a cause for how far we had come from, and they reopened the grounds for us for 5 minutes. That was the speediest sight seeing stop I have ever been a part of, but we very much appreciated the generousity of the staff and their own time. We were in and out in five minutes as promised, which is quite a feat for a group of 13 tourists!
We hustled from there across the street, to see Desmond Tutu's house, but that was closed for the day, with no sign of possible negotiation of entry. Next to the property is a lively bar, and we decided to stop for a fast beverage and snack. I should clarify that by 'fast', we were going to each get one drink and share some appetizers. This was a reminder that 'fast' is a relative term here in South Africa, our orders were a long time coming, and it wasn't until almost 7 pm that we were finally able to pay (note, this place was packed, and was very entertaining watching the locals and tourists). We finally headed back to our hotel, where some of us went to supper at the Bull Run restaurant there. My chicken curry dinner was delicious, but I was starving by 8:30 when we finally got it. Worth the wait, but not so good for me, as I like to eat regularly and at an earlier time. It was great company at the dinner table, with about half the team, and after great story telling and sharing, I finally returned to my room, welcomed with a chocolate on my pillow and my bed nicely turned down.
I feel that i have not been able to adequately communicate the impact and intensity of what I experienced today; it was life-changing and powerful. It was disturbing and intense, while being laced with threads of hope and inspiration. I wish I could capture this better, but am somewhat at a loss. What I have shared is like the tip of an iceberg, with me only being able to express a small portion of the complete experience; the bulk of it is below the surface, and will be recalled in bits for the rest of my life. I have never lived a day like this before. I thank our trip organizers, guides, my team mates, and of course everyone who I read about or heard about or saw in videos and in person, throughout the day.
I am so lucky to have had this day in my life, as intense and diverse as it was. And now with a heavy heart, and countless thoughts swirling through my mind, I will try to rest to prepare for what tomorrow will bring.
I would like to close today's account with one of Nelson Mandela's quotes:
"During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."
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