Hello again,
Let's pick up the story again from where we left off, just as I was getting to Africa for the first time in my life.
Now that I’ve left India, I am officially halfway through the voyage (at least in the conditions that I set out, and not in any mathematical measure, as that already passed). It is hard to believe that I am already halfway through the trip, but, given the experiences I’ve already had, it is equally difficult to believe that I have only been on the road for about 50 days now. It’s a kind of mental conundrum to find oneself in, let me tell you. I woke up several times during the flight, due to bumpy conditions over the Indian Ocean. While I love travel, it has begun to dawn on me that I am not the best flyer. I don’t freak out or do anything hysterical, but I am certainly uncomfortable with the ways in which planes tend to jostle and dip as they go. No matter how benign, falling in an unexpected air pocket is an experience I could go the rest of my life without and have no qualms.
We got a pretty good breakfast, as airlines go, and nothing much happened until we touched down in one of Africa’s biggest cities, Johannesburg, known to her friends as Jo’burg or Jozi. We walked down some stairs onto the tarmac at Oliver Tambo International Airport (named for the famous ANC leader who steered the organization against Apartheid from exile while Nelson Mandela sat in a prison cell on Robben Island) and took a bus to the international terminal. At the international terminal I was given a very courteous treatment at immigration, a byproduct of the World Cup I imagine, and then was directed to the baggage carousel, where I grabbed my bag and walked into the main terminal building. I quickly grabbed a taxi and, for a somewhat annoyingly high rate, was whisked away to my hostel, in the far northern suburb of Randburg. Randburg was the best place for me to stay, we had posited, because it was far enough out of central Johannesburg as to be relatively safe, and it was one of the only places available when we were booking that was still charging reasonable rates.
As the taxi, and my driver Justice, pulled up to the Accoustix Hostel, on Jan Smuts Avenue, I started to realize that this safety factor meant that I would truly be residing in the 'burbs, and that I would be a fair distance from most things of interest or import. Nonetheless, it is a price I was willing to pay to be able to sleep soundly, and more importantly, to allow my parents to sleep soundly, while I was in Johannesburg. The place looked really nice, with a pool (although it was too cold to use it), some good common areas, and a park just outside the high wall of the complex. That was something that became clear very quickly on my drive to the hostel: every house and business that isn't part of a strip mall has a high concrete wall topped with razor wire, electric wire, or both. It seems that this is a common measure against crime here in Johannesburg, although I question the need in some places. Being in a mostly white neighborhood, though, I wasn't surprised to see white racial fears being played out in the manner in which they constructed their homes. I proceeded to check into the hostel and then set out to get some lunch.
I went to Sandton, the nicest area of Jo'burg, and had lunch at one of the malls there. I thought it funny that every store in the mall, no matter their merchandise or target group of clients, was selling vuvuzelas. The craze has truly taken over here. There were, however, multiple signs throughout the mall reminding customers to refrain from blowing them inside. Even in South Africa, it would appear, there are limits to the tolerance of these annoying plastic horns and the bees nest of noise they emit. After the mall I got a taxi over to the Apartheid Museum, the country's most important museum dedicated to the system of racial segregation and separation that dominated South Africa for decades. The museum makes for a fascinating look into the soul of the country, and it contains more information than any normal human being could absorb in one trip. The journey begins with a race identity card, assigned randomly to the visitor, much as non-white race cards were assigned during Apartheid, with members of a single family often being classified as different races. The race on your card then forces you to enter either through the White entrance to the museum or through the Non-white entrance. They take you through a hall filled with pictures of actual ID cards and statistics on the number of people who changed their official race in each year, to highlight the randomness of the system. From there the two paths converge and the visitor is taken on a historical overview of racism in South Africa, from the arrival of Europeans in the 1500's to the start of official Apartheid with the National Party government of 1948. Then the museum traces the development of the system, and the counterdevelopment of the opposition. There were many interesting mini-exhibits, including isolation cells from Robben Island and paper ballots from the first democratic elections ever held in South Africa, in 1994. The museum ends on an optimistic note, with a garden of the veld. There was also a side exhibit on the life of Nelson Mandela, which was very interesting in its own right. After the museum I had dinner in Sandton and got a lift back to the hostel, where I crashed because of the time difference.
The next day I woke up early, still on India time, and had some free breakfast (bread and jam) before getting showered and dressed for the day. I then went down to the minibus taxi rank and got a ride in to the center of town. Since I was taking the minibus taxi, and not a metered taxi, the long trip only cost seven rand, or about a dollar. It was a hair raising trip, because both the van and the driver were underqualified for the job, but it also felt good to travel the way the locals do (or at least the local nonwhite South Africans).
Once in central Jo'burg I explored a bit. I went to the tallest observation deck in the city at the Top of Africa, which was really just an office building with an empty top floor. Either way, it served its purpose of being tall and having windows. It was very interesting to see the way the city is laid out, with the hills of the highveld and the remains of active and inactive mining operations scattered throughout the city in commercial, industrial, and even residential areas. The city is very obviously the result of poor planning, since it was populated very quickly during the gold rush on the Witwatersrand and the Gold Reef. Following that I went to Gandhi Square, a mostly commercial area where the city has commemorated the long time that Gandhi spent in South Africa. I then went to the nearby site of the law offices of Mandela and Tambo. From there it was on to the City Hall and lunch at the nearby pub Guildhall, which has been serving customers since the mid-1800's. It was quite good pub grub, and I was then on my way again.
From Guildhall I walked over to the newly revitalized area of Newtown, just outside of the CBD. Here I visited the South African Breweries HQ, where I was taken on a 1.5 hour long tour, which included a look at how a shebeen, or illicit pub, works in the townships. I then went to the nearby Museum of Africa, which is housed in an old market building. As a result, it is very spread out, and despite having a very large collection, feels somewhat empty at times. I then took a cab to Sandton where I got some supplies, and made myself dinner back at the hostel. Then it was off to bed after a busy day.
The next day, Friday the 2nd of July, was a very insightful day for me. I took a tour of Soweto, the largest township in Johannesburg and undoubtedly its most famous. I also got to visit the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital, but more on that later. I had decided to take the Soweto tour for two reasons. One was that I was naturally curious about the living conditions of South Africa's townships, where a very large percentage of their nonwhite populations live, while the second reason was that I wanted to ask people who lived there about their quality of and access to healthcare.
The day again started off with bread and jam, before I and two Aussies were picked up by our tour operators, Quinton and Luca. We then drove to the airport to pick up our fourth person We waited about 30 minutes, and eventually a friendly Canuck also joined our cadre. We then drove over to the Orlando West section of Soweto. Now, some background. Soweto is a name which stands for South West Townships. It was built to house nonwhite workers away from the white areas of Johannesburg. Most of the original workers were employed by the mines and living in single sex hostels, or rows of common housing. The hostels, which were the first area we went to, have now been converted into family homes, although these only consist of two small rooms and a small backyard, where most have created a makeshift third room. It was pretty stark poverty, and it took some adjusting not to have to choke back emotions. We spoke with some of the people living there, who all seemed fairly happy and well adjusted to their lives. We then went to a nearby shebeen, where we had local communal sorghum beer, which was actually very tasty. We were also given some koeksisters, or fried dough dumplings. This reaffirms my belief that every culture in the world has some form of fried bread.
We continued our walk through the neighborhoods in Orlando West, meeting friendly and welcoming people at every turn. It was a very refreshing experience to meet so many nice people, who seemed to be mostly optimistic, no matter their living conditions. Most of them were happy to have been given much more autonomy than they had received in Soweto under the Apartheid regime. We met lots of little kids, who were wandering the streets, because we brought oranges along with us. They were overjoyed with the fruit, and tagged along with us for our whole time there. We also met a sangoma, or ritual shaman. She was a very interesting person, whose main tasks fell in the healing and divining categories. She was happy to talk about her role in society, although obviously not about the specifics of her tasks. It was a neat window into the African soul of Soweto.
I then got to briefly visit the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital, which is not only the largest hospital in Soweto, South Africa, or even Africa, but is the largest in the world. It has more than 3,200 beds, which is mind bogglingly immense. I was only able to stay for a short time because it is still not the safest place for a white person to stay, especially if they are not a member of hospital staff. It was an eye opening experience, though. One statistic which will stay with me for a while is that roughly half of the patients who check into the hospital are HIV positive. This is a very important aspect of the health situation in South Africa. Almost a quarter of the population is HIV positive, and the number grows higher among nonwhite members of society.
From there we went to the Apartheid Museum, where i was able to go over some of the things I had missed the first time. We then went back to the hostel, where I did some work, watched some TV, and made myself some Bobotie for dinner, which is a delicious Cape Malay dish of sweetened rice and beef. I watched the Ghana vs. Uruguay World Cup match later that night, since the whole of South Africa was behind the only African team left in the tournament. They were all behind BaGhana BaGhana, and so was I, but alas, it was
not to be, as Uruguay advanced and Ghana were sent home. I then went to bed.
The next day I was feeling pretty under the weather, so I stayed in and didn't do too much. Other than a short trip to fast food joint Yanky's for lunch, I was at the hostel all day. It was a pretty similar story for Sunday as well, even though it was the 4th of July. I spent some time preparing for my trip to Pretoria the next day, and the people I would meet there. Yanky's was closed, so I was forced to walk about two miles to the nearest strip mall, where I had some McDonald's, since it was open. Although I was happy to be going to the next stop on my South African journey, I was also sad to see Johannesburg go. It was not my favorite city in the Circumnavigation thus far, and there were certainly times when I had been out of my element, or uncomfortable, but it was an excellent introduction to the continent for a guy who had never been to Africa before.
Pretoria to come soon, by the way.
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