Johannesburg, South Africa - Day 318

Got to town and immediately took a wrong turn bringing us to the completely wrong end of town during rush hour with no decent map. Sweet. …on the plus side, feeling a million times more confident about Johannesburg compared to a month and a half ago when we were there! (or at least driving on the other side of the road) Stopped at the mall for one last shop, headed north to halfway between Jo’burg and Pretoria to stay on a farm with one of Jen’s distant cousins.

Johannesburg and Pretoria have been steadily growing towards each other over the past number of decades, inevitably meeting each other in the middle sometime in the near future (if it hasn’t already happened!). Together they nearly fill the state of “Gauteng”… someone told me Gauteng is responsible for burning nearly 80% of SA’s fuel consumption. Yikes. Anyway, Carvel and Judy (Jen’s relatives) are hanging onto what looks to be the very last 6 acre plot in Gauteng, with their property almost completely surrounded by development (not to mention plenty of razorwire and electrical fencing). Well maybe not really the last plot but it almost felt that way… Was actually very interesting listening to Carvel speak: both he and Judy are originally from Jo’burg, he’s very well-educated, very knowledgeable about SA’s history and gave some incredibly convincing arguments for the white opposition in SA (well… nothing like he thinks they should bring apartheid back or anything, just explanations for why things are the way they are and where they need to go… yes, another political conversation!)

Figured that probably the best way we could possibly finish our trip in Africa off was going for a tour of Soweto on our very last day! (after frantically hunting around the city all morning in search for Lloyd – our new wooden hippo). Soweto (short for South Western Township) is easily SA’s biggest township with a population somewhere between 3 to 4 million people (probably Africa’s biggest township!) It’s around 100 square kms (10kms x 10kms)… standing at the top of Oppenheimer Tower at the centre, you aren’t able to see anything beyond the edges of Soweto. The township was created by the white government during the apartheid years and was where all the blacks that worked in the city were forced to live (part of apartheid was segregating people of different races into different areas where they were allowed to live… I believe this segregation happened around the 1950’s??) Carvel told us about coming home as a child to his mother and their servant crying because she had to move to Soweto which was too far to continue working for them…

Anyway Soweto was VERY different from what I expected… amazingly I felt far more safe in Soweto than I did in many other areas around the city. There seems to be a HUGE amount of effort into making the place better: nearly all streets are paved, most houses are actually REAL houses (as opposed to tin shacks); that said there are still many shacks in some areas (especially an area called Kliptown)… the government is frantically building houses for these people in an effort to achieve a goal of removing all shanty towns by 2010 (not coincidently the year Fifa World Cup comes to SA) – a lofty goal that I have a hard time believing they’ll achieve, unfortunately. Winnie Mandela (Nelson’s ex), as well as other public figures such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu in fact still live in Soweto (it has better and worse areas like any other city would). They’re even building a Holiday Inn in Soweto… can you believe it!? I think that’s a bit much…

Tour lasted around 5 hours with easily one of the best guides of the trip (22 year old girl living in Soweto); ended it all off with a drink in the shebeen across the street from the Soweto bus station. This shebeen felt more like a shebeen should I think: they in fact started as someone’s own house – back in the day blacks weren’t allowed to drink so they started shebeens… if cops came around to check up on them they’d all pretend they were just hanging around at their friend’s house! (I’d imagine we had something similar in North America during the prohibition days) Definitely made people look twice when we walked in, but then everyone was very friendly, music was good, and immediately after sitting down some ladies wanted us to come sit with them and the rest was history. Originally we didn’t really want to do a township tour for fear of making a spectacle out of peoples’ poverty… but I think it was really a good thing considering how different our views of it now are…

Off to meet a few more of Jen’s distant relatives for dinner, then off to bed late after a long last day, before an early morning flight the next day.

Day 318 of the trip. Amazing. At around day 10, it felt like the trip would never end. We were tired around day 150 with SO much more time to go. Day 250 was feeling strange with the end in sight; day 300 – 318 might as well not have existed… not sure where those 3 weeks went. Bugger. I’m both happy and sad at this point; tired yet energized, missing friends from home, but with little desire to go home. Not broke, but having a substantial amount of money less, but certainly thinking every penny was worth it. A little bit skinnier but still not skinny enough (don’t ever come to Africa thinking you’ll lose weight without trying!); a lot more likely to talk to someone I don’t know, yet a little less likely to put up with someone’s shit. Confused about the future but also never having been more sure about what’s LESS important in life; more patient, more tolerant, and unsure how I’ll handle all our petty little rules under which we live at home. They say once you’ve been to Africa you’re never the same again… I take this to be a very positive statement and look forward to seeing if it’s true!!