last day in South Africa

Tomorrow morning we depart for Botswana. It’s been a bit of a run without e-mail so my apologies if I haven’t responded to you directly. We’re staying at an Anglican run guest house in Joburg and have been on the run since our arrival Saturday night. Sunday we headed off to Rosebank, a local mall that has a HUGE African market on the entire second floor of their parking garage. While I’ve been here several times (Paul and I love to eat at the Thai/Vietnamese restaurant there called “Cranks” and see movies at their independent film theater), I’ve never been to the market. Sadly, I had to take another student to the doctors who had failed to mention to me that she had been coughing up green phlegm for several days. Yeah…I think it’s time to go to the doctor. So I didn’t get to go to the market or do much else, but eat at Cranks…which was delicious! Sunday evening a Furman alumni who now lives in Joburg and is involved in many citizen activist activities came to talk to us. I love Dale…he is so radical he was kicked out of the Communist party in South Africa. He is always quite challenging and inspiring to our students.

Monday we spent the full day at “Orange Farm” a community of deep poverty that has rallied together to create a variety of community oriented projects to earn money and survive. We visited their recycling plant (where glass, plastics and paper products are turned in for cash) and their day care center where the children recited the South African Bill of Rights for Children. Very poignant to hear kids reciting in unison how they have a right to shelter, food, water, an education as trenches are dug outside the building to put in plumbing (which they have been living without since they were established 10 years ago!). Our final visit that day was to a local talk radio station where our students got on the radio…that makes 2 media forms for 2 countries (they were photographed at a concert and in the paper in Namibia)…they’re hoping Paul can get them on TV in Botswana!

Tuesday we were off to Soweto, one of the biggest and most well known areas of Johannesburg. It is known particularly for the anti-apartheid violence that took place here prior to independence in 1994. Here we visited one of the biggest public hospitals in the world and then went off to a couple of very powerful museums dealing with the struggle of independence. We suffered a bit of cognitive dissonance when we stopped off at Gold Reef City for lunch, a big Casino situated right next to the Apartheid Museum. The irony of it was not lost on the students.

Wednesday was off to the capital of Pretoria to visit the outrageously ominous Vortrekker Monument built by the Boers in the 1940s and 1950s to commemorate their long trek and struggles with the English and Zulus. It’s huge. Overbearing. Kind of obnoxious. But my colleague, Erik, would be proud of how well the students worked to de-construct the narrative of the monument. Oh you would be so proud.

Last night we went to an African show called, “Umoja” which means “togetherness.” It used African music and dance to give an historical review leading up to today and the “togetherness” South Africa is now experiencing (not so sure about that last assumption as I sit in one of the most violent and dangerous cities in the world…there certainly isn’t a whole lot of “togetherness” between the South Africans and the Zimbabwean refuges…but maybe that wasn’t their point). The music and dance was entertaining if not a bit overwhelming and I think many of my young students saw more bare breasts than they have seen in their entire lives during the “native costume” section of the show. Others were impressed (or overwhelmed) by the African “booty” shaking that was part of the contemporary dance section. Wow! It gave a whole new meaning to “shake it if you got it.” It also reinforced why I am sometimes referred to as “scrawny” by African standards.

Today we visited a housing development program and then had to drop one of the students off at the airport who needed to depart early to get back to Washington for an important scholarship interview. A bit of a crisis occurred when it dawned me a half hour prior to her pick up that I still had her passport back in my suitcase at the guest house (45 minutes across town!). UGH! I can’t believe neither of us thought of it but we dashed back across town picked it up and sent her in the transport to the airport. At least I thought of it before I sent her to the airport. That would have been really bad.

To be honest, that is one of the things I’ve been struggling with in the last week or so. Having made the conscious decision not to have kids it is sometimes overwhelming to all of a sudden have 20 of them! And while we’ve been traveling for over 6 weeks they still don’t plan well…they don’t bring toilet paper, snacks, sun tan lotion and I think “what exactly do you have in your bag if you don’t have those things?” Anyway, we’re hoping they get a bit more common sense before we get to Botswana but I’m not counting on it.

So we head off tomorrow for Botswana. Sadly it has been raining like crazy there (still, even though we had pushed this part of the trip as late as possible to try to be “out” of rainy season). We’re hoping we don’t have 19 days of camping in the rain or getting stuck in the mud. But not much we can do about the weather. As they say in Africa… we’ll make a plan.

I’ll write when I can.
Love,
Kristy