Joberg stuff!

Alrighty, here is the long-awaited, much-purported(I love using the word "purported") slightly distorted, exported version of the looooong weekend at Joberg for your reading pleasure! I'm going to separate this into "tales" to help you navigate, because the post will be quite lengthy.

Thursday:

The Tale of the Nalgene *sighs*

After emailing in my paper for Urban and Rural Development(all of my lecturers aren't picky about you turning in the paper in class, just on the same day by 4pm--they understand that there are 15+ computer terminals, but only two printer/copiers that can jam up and don't receive the print job until sometimes an hour after you have sent it to them), Charlotte and I grabbed lunch at Flamingos (well, she got lunch, I got chips, because I heard their chips were really good--eh, not really. The chips here locally are mostly cooked soft, and I like thick, crispy chips with soft insides--yes, I've become a chip afiaciando! *laughs* Well, they do seem to come with everything). Anyway, then we ate the food while at the Sugar Bowl(the hangout area at Cornerstone) getting briefed on the trip intinerary(which was totally not followed, but more on that later). Afterwards, I realize my Nalgene isn't around, so I go on a search for it and I can't find it anywhere in Cornerstone. I suspect I left it at Flamingo's and someone took it, but I wasn't sure. Then, when we're about to leave, Charlotte tells me a story: she was talking with some street kids and ended up buying them all cooldrinks(sodas), and one kid lifted up a translucent green Nalgene container with a small black lid and a little bit of water in the bottom and said she could put his cooldrink in there! *laughs* What can you do? I'm sorry, I tried to hold onto it people, I REALLY did, but y'know, at least I know it has a good home now. The street kids don't have a lot, and I know at least he'll get use out of it. I bought a bottle of water to use for the weekend and I bought a more permanent one at Checkers yesterday, so it's all good.


The Tale of the Flight to Joberg and the Backpacker Lodge

We flew Kalula air. They have very zany green-patterned airline seats; I've never seen seats that...colorful. Oh yes, and our flight was delayed so we went to eat at Spur, which is like an American Applebees or Fridays, with the exception that American casual steak places places don't customarily offer garlic butter snails or monkey gland sauce(I don't THINK there are actual monkey glands in it...). I stuck to the salad bar(one stop only, so you really pile up your plate).

Once we arrived at the lodge, there was a braai for us there, which was good, although it was past ten o' clock, so none of us were terribly hungry. The next morning was apples, bananas, corn flakes, and white bread for breakfast--I had brought along some wheat-free, sugar-free muesli, some nuts, and some oatcakes, because I never know what's going to be for breakfast. This morning we learned that we weren't staying at the lodge anymore--apparently there were issues with the people using the cash bar onsite and also rumors of someone smoking marijuana at night--probably not the best spot. So for the rest of the trip we stayed at the Formula 1 Inn, which was the epitome of cheap, clean, and efficient, right down to the self-cleaning toilets and showers!


The Tale of Friday's trip to Soweto, The Apartheid Museum, and the Hector Pieterson Museum and Memorial.

The Apartheid museum...well, it was about Apartheid, which we've been studying all semester. It was interesting to see the actual film clips and footage of various events, including the portest marches and the government propoganda films. One of my areas of interest in Apartheid, and in issues of gross human rights violations and atrocities, is how people can just sit by and do nothing, or even support the oppressive regime. I guess because I'm interested in broadening minds, I want to understand how someone can close them also, because then you know how to speak to people and work with them. If ignorance is one of the main problems when people sit back and allow atrocities to happen, then you need to know where people are at in that ignorance in order to try to bring them out of it. I'm not sure if that makes any sense.

Soweto is actually an acronym for South Western Townships. A lot of the main political action and protests happened here. We toured through it, saw Nelson Mandela's house there(from the bus only--this was after the museums and we were tired by that time). We stopped by this place, Alina's, for lunch, which was really delightful--great food and we were helping out people in the township by supporting their restaurant. Afterwards there were these Soweto dancers, but I didn't stay for that, because they started whistling really loudly and sustained-ly, which about killed my ears--I was literally crying from the pain. Oh, by the way, for those who don't know, I have very hypersensitive hearing.

The Hector Pieterson museum was also very intense--more so than the Apartheid museum, because we had been studying that already and because this museum involved children protesting the Bantu education act that limited their studies and forced them to learn in Afrikaans when none of them even knew the language, sometimes even the teachers! The images of kids being shot at by policemen and the memorials...yeah, still working through that.

Friday evening we supped at the mall, which meant pita-less shwarma for me and sugarfree ice cream for dessert! I don't usually indulge, because I'm not fond of all the junque that makes it sugarfree, but every so often it's nice, especially since I haven't had time to make my own ice cream here.


The Tale of Saturday's Trip to Constitutional Hill, the Voortrekker Monument, and the Union buildings.

Constitutional Hill is where the Constitutional Court(think US Supreme Court) is located--and it's also the former site of prisons. They wanted to build justice where injustice once took place, as a way of making peace with the past and redeeming the future. We toured the prisons--I think the disparities between white, coloured, and black treatment was the worst. I'm just going to highlight three things that really struck me, because I'm still processing this as well. Black women weren't even allowed panties for a while in the prisons--yes, periods and the feminine products they were allowed(pads only) were interesting experiences. On the male side, homosexuality could land you in prison--but within the prison complex, homosexuality was prominent among prisoners, even those normally heterosexual, and the wardens laughed at it and gave creedence to the gang system that used it--but at the same time, you could be flogged if caught practicing it, even in the prison--what the-??? *sighs* People need to make up their minds, or whatever, or I don't know. Lastly, for Christmas, a white prisoner was given a pound of Christmas pudding; a black prisoner was given up a cup of tea with perhaps extra sugar, and milk if there was some available after the whites and coloureds got tea.

We then toured the new Constitutional building. So many parts of the structure were symbolic of new beginnings. It seems to be a pattern in South Africa of new structures, but the same problems they have to work through, because it's all still so new and can't be done right away, and people don't change as much as we'd like to think we do. They have eleven judges representing the eleven national languages of South Africa (though now there's a twelfth: sign language), though each judge doesn't speak a different language. There are three women judges and two disabled, including one blind judge. So interesting to compare to the US system.

Lunch was on the go to the Voortrekker monument, which was quite something to follow up the Constitutional Hill! The monument basically lauds and praises the migration of the Voortreekers from the Cape Town area to the northern and eastern parts of South Africa. The controversy? Well, their relations with the Africans--think pioneers/settlers and the Native Americans. Yeah. It was interesting trying to learn about the history and mindset of these people--that, like the pioneers, many of them weren't evil or anything, and in fact were nice people--just misguided and--yeah, okay, another thing to work through for me. ;-)

After that we bus-toured Pretoria, which they're actually trying to rename "Tshwana" in honor of local tribes rather than the Voortrekker Andrew Pretorious; not much of us paid a great deal of attention at this point, because we were drained. Then we went to the Union building, where we just walked around outside and some people bought ice cream and took pictures.


The Tale of The Braai and the Beer-Guy

Then we went to another braai at a township where one of our Cornerstone aides, Colleen, used to live. Very nice people, very nice braai--they even had maize-meal pizza! We talked and learned and I was tired so I slept on a bed inside after a while. Then, we loaded up to go back to the inn and Janine noticed that our driver--well, wasn't driving. He said that he was too tired from driving us around all day and that the driver was another person from the bus company who knew the area better. Something smelled funny--literally--but we weren't sure at first...and then the guy started being, well, rather unsafe, and then on the highway he burned out the clutch, so we were kind've stranded on the side of the road--don't worry, Janine, Colleen, and Charlotte were totally on his case before this and in control and we quickly moved over to another bus with a different driver. It turns out that the "new driver" was actually our old driver's friend, not an actual employee of the bus company, and he was drunk. Yep.
TIA=This Is Africa. Though I think a similar even could happen in the US as well.


A Brief Tale Of Sunday

Alrighty, Sunday we went to a local church, they had food for us, it was good, we went ot the airport, flew back to Cape Town on Mango airlines(like Kalula, you paid for snacks) and I brought a mini-mango, so I ate a mango in a mango. This made me happy. :-D

But my! There's still so much to process. Praise God for His care!

From Proverbs 3:

19 By wisdom the LORD laid the earth's foundations,
by understanding he set the heavens in place;
20 by his knowledge the deeps were divided,
and the clouds let drop the dew.
21 My son, preserve sound judgment and discernment,
do not let them out of your sight;
22 they will be life for you,
an ornament to grace your neck.
23 Then you will go on your way in safety,
and your foot will not stumble;
24 when you lie down, you will not be afraid;
when you lie down, your sleep will be sweet.
25 Have no fear of sudden disaster
or of the ruin that overtakes the wicked,
26 for the LORD will be your confidence
and will keep your foot from being snared.

Bye for now!