Semana Santa in South Africa: Part I

Day One... Johannesburg. I can't put into words quite eloquently enough the way that I felt about going to South Africa or about the way that I feel now that I've returned but I'll do my best to try. It's definitely a place you should go to at least once in your lifetime. There is a lot of history there and a lot of strength. Upon arrival, I had a super ambitious itinerary. Those of you who know me well, know that I have a thing for creating ambitious itineraries. I was determined to DO South Africa, and do it right. A small wrench was thrown into my plans when I arrived at the airport to find that my transportation left an hour before I had even passed through Customs. I was warned that "taxis" were a shady means of transport in Joburg so I was thrilled to find out that after over an hour of walking in a circle looking for my name, that no one was coming for me and I was off to find shady means of transportation. Sticking out like a sore American thumb, I was approached by a "taxi driver" who offered me a ride. I was so annoyed that my cell phone credit ran out and I couldn't contact my friends about getting to their place, or do anything else that I just went for it. Before I knew it, I was in a dark parking garage with a strange non-taxi looking driver. Although my flight was long I got my sense back and asked to see his ID and some "taxi-like" documentation. Shortly after that his cabbie homie yelled out of his "taxi" something in Zulu that seemed like to me, from the way he made eyes at me like "that's a good one right there!" with a big gold toothed smile. I said a prayer and approached the "taxi" to find a cute little Mercedes Benz circa 2005. Not that kidnapping "taxi drivers" can't drive Mercedes but I took a chance. He tried to rip me off of course and charge me way more than the ride was worth but I let him know the deal and he took me. I guess my only sacrifice was sitting up front with him which wasn't too bad because I got to pick the radio stations and was car dancing with my chubby little driver to Kanye's "Love Lockdown". I arrived in Melville (a cute hipsterish suburb of Johannesburg) early afternoon and was greeted by one of my gracious hosts, Matt. Matt and Wendy are fellow PIMs (my classmates at SIT) that are working for an organization called Next Aid whose mission is "to promote community-driven, environmentally sustainable, economically and socially empowering responses to the AIDS orphan pandemic." It's pretty amazing work that takes a lot of dedication and hard work and Wendy works it out! Thankfully for me they welcomed me into their cute little abode and showed me around.


After a fabulous lunch at a cute little café called Service Station, Matt and I got lost trying to get to the Apartheid Museum. Although it took us a good two hours to get somewhere that should've taken us 20 minutes to find, we finally made it. Upon arrival, the ticket attendant threw down our entrance tickets, a map and two little cards. Being the nerdy little trip planner that I am, I researched the Apartheid Museum and knew that these cards that said Non-White and White were for both Matt and I and we would be entering the museum through different entrances. The point is to show people that people were divided and had different experiences during Apartheid. Thankfully this cute little security guard came to us to explain the cards that we were to carry and some examples of his own experiences.

He told us that as a boy he went to a store to purchase some bread and was told that he wasn't allowed to buy white bread because white bread was for whites only. He told us about the different tests that were given to determine your whiteness. If a pencil was placed on the top of your head and it fell off easily than it meant that you were white. If the pencil didn't fall straight down or got tangled it meant that you weren't white.

In addition to the bread...as a black person or coloured person (any person of mixed race which I'll explain further later) you weren't allowed to eat or buy white sugar either, only brown sugar.

Apartheid which in Afrikaans (the language spoken by the Dutch settlers of South Africa) means separateness was the formal segregation and division of South Africa that was established in 1948. Informal segregation had been in place since colonial times but there was no law on segregation dividing the people on racial lines. Under Apartheid people were classified based on their color, their features, and their ancestry. Native South Africans were stripped of their legal rights as citizens based on their color and were moved out of their homes, were stripped of their language and were treated as less than second class citizens.




Race distinctions:

Europeans: are regarded as persons of European descent. The offspring of any mix marriage in which one of the parties is not pure European are to be regarded as a coloured person.

Natives: the term native is used to designate a pure blooded aboriginal of the Bantu race.

Asiatics: the chief Asiatic nations represented in South Africa are Indians, Chinese, Japanese, and Burmese.

Coloured persons: this embraces all persons of mix race and the census classification includes amongst others hottentots, Bushmen, Cape Malays, Griouas, Konannas, Negros, Sthelenians and Cape Coloured. (I found this written on the wall in the District Six Museum. I thought it was helpful to understand the divide.)


After the museum we went out for an amazing Thai dinner in Melville, (which I would say is like a more trendy Adams Morgan) and then went for drinks and dessert. I enjoyed this drink called amarula. Amarula is an African liqueur that is very similar to Bailey's Irish cream but it is made from the exotic Marula fruit. Check it out if you're ever there (but not with too much ice).


To SOWETO and the Top of Africa
Early the next morning Matt and I went on a tour of Soweto. Our first site was the rich neighborhood of Soweto where super nice houses cost about R100,000 - R500,000 which is about 10,000-50,000 USD.


These are some of the houses in the shantytowns and people have to steal power to get electricity to their homes because they are still being neglected a great deal by the government.

Many of the homes you'll find in Johannesburg and other cities have barbed wire around them or really sharp fences to protect their homes.


As soon as we entered the township in Soweto this one little girl was drawn to Matt. She was singing and smiling and did not want to let go of his hand. I could've scooped her up and put her in my pocket.

After we left the Township we went to Orlando West which is the Beverly Hills of Joburg because it was the home of so many "star" South Africans.

This is the address of the former home of Nelson and Winne Mandela. Winnie has turned it into a museum.

This tree has a very interesting story. Winnie Mandela buried the umbilical cords of her children and her grandchildren under this tree at their former house. She wanted them to always be connected to their ancestors, and to their roots in Africa and this connection was something that links all of them to this home, to their struggle and to their heritage as Africans and as a family.

In the neighborhood of Orlando West we have all the homes of the famous leaders of the movement against Apartheid. This is Desmond Tutu's home.

I thought it was cool that they are painting the water towers so that they look less unattractive, even if it is because they are promoting a bank.
Although you might not be able to see it, in front of homes like this (a very typical home in Soweto) there would be a tiny home. I don't mean tiny as in small but a home made of tin) and these were built by the government to remind these dwellers where they come from and that they have moved up but were still tin dwellers at heart.

Just down the street from Beverly Hills is where a great deal of history took place, and change was sparked.

A memorial was erected in honor of the first child who was killed on June 16th 1976 during resistance of Apartheid in Soweto. Hector Pieterson was a 12 year old boy who was killed when the police opened fire in a crowd of students who were protesting against the system of Apartheid. He became the iconic figure of this time in the movement.




After we left the museum, before we headed back to Joburg I wanted to go to a famous place called Wandie's for lunch. Our tour guide without coming out and saying he refused to take us there to eat told us that Wandie's sold out and was at the airport doing big business and no longer cared about the people. I didn't think it could be THAT bad until he drove us by the restaurant to at least take a picture and we saw that really, no one was there anymore. From others I heard it was THE PLACE to be...I guess he really sold out but here is where Wandie's used to be. If you want it now, guess you have to go to the airport.

Going over the Nelson Mandela Bridge in downtown Joburg to head to the

Top of Africa!

The Top of Africa is the tallest building in Africa. It's located at the top of the Carlton Centre in Joburg. So I figured if I was going to go all the way to Africa, I should go all 50 floors up to the top. Although we didn't stay up there very long you could see from up to about 30 miles away (Soweto, Sandton, Pretoria, and all of Joburg) from the top.




After we left the Top of Africa we went off to the Lesedi Cultural Village where we got to learn about various tribes of South Africa and experience a taste of each of the cultures... it went a little something like this...

In the entrance way we were greeted by these guys...

The official Lesedi mobile

These little guys were of course my favorites. I went to take a picture of this guy when our tour started and he puckered up his lips at me.

Some of the guys from the village

A night of dancing

After dancing we had a traditional South African dinner with some ostrich, crocodile and other game meats. Aside from the ostrich it was pretty good. This guy was my second favorite and since my first favorite warrior was explaining to ignorant tourists why they were kicking themselves in the head while performing (they weren't really) I had to settle for second best.

Matt was skeptical about the evening activities but honestly, the dancing was solid and the people were really sweet and informative.

Wild and Wonderful
The next day we picked up Bianca at the airport in Joburg and headed off to Pilanesburg to the Pilanesburg National Park. We drove our own car through the park for hours and saw A LOT!

Less than 2 minutes in we saw an elephant. Well I should say, Bianca saw an elephant. I am probably the worst game spotter in the history of game spotting. I kept swearing I saw buffalo and rhinos and really just spotted rocks and more rocks. a few hours in I stepped my game up and identified a monitor lizard and some guinea fowl but that was about the extent of it.

At Pilanesburg we saw: Kudu (a type of antelope), giraffes, rhinos, wildebeests, impala, elephants, hippos, warthogs, monitor lizard, guinea fowl, zebras, vervet monkey) and a few others I can't remember.

The fabulous Matt and Wendy who know way more about safaris than I could ever know.

Because we're crazy, we got out of our vehicle. I'll do anything for a photo op.
This is our scared look.

SIT's finest

kudu battle it out

really unattractive wildebeests with mohawks

What's more amazing than a rhino's arse at sunset? Not much.

Durban
Durban is the second most populous city in South Africa and the city with the largest population of Indians outside of India.

We arrived in Durban pretty early in the afternoon and checked into our hotel. I must say that the website made it look a lot nicer than it was but TIA (this is Africa) so we sucked it up and went exploring. We wanted to do a tour of Durban and the surrounding areas. Whatever you do, if you ever go to Durban, don't go to the tourist information office you will get nothing but lots of pamphlets and get ripped off. We ended up meeting another guy while we were in the office who set us up for the Inanda Tour which would take us around to the Gandhi Settlement, the Inanda Seminary and some other places in and around Durban.

We were a bit worn out after our tour hustle so we went walking. We walked from North Beach to South Beach and had a lovely dinner at Moyo on the beach.

Good Friday Durban Style
We started off the morning with Mr. Vincent and Tommy (our tour guide and our driver) and headed to The Gandhi Settlement. We visited the site where Mahatma Gandhi's house once stood. We visited to replica of the home because the Apartheid government burned his home and the school he created for children as a threat to the anti-Apartheid movement. Although most of his things were destroyed or taken from the Settlement the spirit was still alive and a great deal was accomplished there.

The Indian Opinion is the newspaper that Gandhi started to present the views of the Indians on Apartheid but at a later date he changed the name to The Opinion to allow all people of color to voice their opinions and be more inclusive in this struggle. Gandhi and his family spent over 25 years in Durban South Africa and made a great impact on the local population and the Indian community, primarily Indians of Gujarati descent.

Although we had an official guide, when we arrived at the Settlement we were handed off to another local guide who has big things in mind for the Gandhi Settlement during the World Cup next summer. He also had big things in store for me and Bianca and they involved home-brewed Zulu beer.

Here's our local guide and Zulu beer specialist.

While we were on our "tour"(if you can call it that) of The Settlement our guide asked us if we had tasted any local beer since we'd been in South Africa. Bianca told him about her sampling of Durban Pale Ale the night before and he "invited" us to have some Zulu beer after our tour. In my mind that meant that were going to go to some local dive bar after the tour and throw one back. I had no intentions of actually having a Zulu beer or anybody else's beer because I don't really drink and I've had beer maybe twice in my whole life. I didn't figure Zulu beer would be much different but ooh was I mistaken in more ways than one. We finish our tour and are invited to the township down the street to some lady's backyard where we are presented a tin can full of some shady looking substance that this man calls beer. I thought I could use my "I don't drink" excuse to avoid getting some disease from that nasty looking tin but thought how un-culturally sensitive of me, let's go ahead and throw it back...lightly as to not get some kind of poison from the tin. I faked a big gulp so that they wouldn't hassle me like the hassled Bianca about taking a bigger sip but it was bitter and super gross. I'm not sure that this beer had completed the fermentation process but I am sure that I will never drink Zulu beer again.

This cute little girl was staring at me with the camera so I decided to take her picture.



Something that I found extremely interesting and controversial is the changing of the street names to reflect "coloured" identities. Post-Apartheid there was a huge sense of nationalism in terms of Black and Coloured peoples need to be reflected in South Africa and street signs in Afrikaans and English were to be changed to reflect a new South Africa. What has happened is that some street signs have been changed from Afrikaan names to Khosa or Zulu names. I was torn about this. One of the major streets in most cities in South Africa is Jan Smuts who was at one point Prime Minister and has been regarded one of the ten greatest South Africans of all time BUT was also one of the most influential advocates of segregation. Where do we draw the line at removing street names? I'm not certain that it's very clear. I don't know that Market Street should become Mkhize Street but I'm also not certain that blatant oppressors and advocates of a most painful piece of South African history should be glorified and revered. If there was a Hitler Blvd. would you be okay with that? George Bush anything already makes me sick enough...food for thought.

The Inanda Seminary
The Seminary is a school for young African women that was started by an American woman in the 20s. We were given a tour by one of the former principals who kept documentation of the school since its existence and preserved the information about the young women with such dignity as though each young girl was his own daughter. The African young women who attended this seminary have grown to become strong leaders in their communities and have fought to keep the school alive so that others can strengthen South Africa as well.

The Victoria Street Market

On our tour we visited the famous Victoria Street Market which has everything from dresses, to electronics, to herbal remedies to cow heads for sale.

I've written about how much Burger King is all over Europe but it doesn't compare to Kentucky Fried Chickens monopoly over fast food in South Africa. Even the Indian market sells KFC spice along with Mother-In-Law Exterminator.

Something that caught my eye and really blew my mind was the constant advertisement for SAFE ABORTIONS FOR R400. I didn't take a picture of the first advertisement I saw but it said that it was easy and painless. R400 is the equivalent of $5 USD and to think that you can get a quick, painless, and EASY abortion for $5 USD doesn't even sound plausible.

I really wanted to go to a Hindu Temple...not really this particular one but the Kendra Temple was still beautiful.

Why a swastika you ask? Well svastika is a sanskrit word that means lucky or well-being and for Hindus, Jains, and Buddhists this is auspicious and is a positive sign of good luck. Isn't it interesting that Nazis took something so positive and made it so evil?

Durban

Next up were the Botanical Gardens. They were beautiful! The most important flower is the protea which is the national flower or South Africa and is a flower that changes shape and color and diverse types are found all along the Limpopo River.







After we left the botanical gardens we headed to the UShaka Aquarium. It appear to be a sunken ship. The interior is incredible and so are the fish and sharks found there.













We stopped to watch some local entertainment. These kids were amazing especially this one little guy. I threw in several Rand the local currency just because of him.


While we were at the airport on a layover to Durban we went to this really great bookstore and I bought the Rough Guide to South Africa. Needless to say it was a ROUGH guide because after reading so many great things about it, Bianca wanted to go to Wilson's Wharf, and when we got there we found that the restaurants offered what was to us the equivalent to TGIFridays or Applebees.

We made due and I tried to local favorite Chicken Bunny Chow which is this huge bowl of bread with potatoes and spicy meat inside. I couldn't eat most of it but I figured it was worth a shot.

Durban was an interesting city but I was ready to leave and couldn't wait to get to Cape Town...stay tuned people Part II is coming up!!