Johburg

The weekend following my trip to Victoria Falls, ACM arranged and treated the program group to a trip to Johannesburg, specifically Soweto. Soweto (which stands for SOuth WEstern TOwnship) was the largest township of Johburg during Apartheid and is still predominately black with a large number of relatively poor neighborhoods. The township system of Apartheid created entire cities for non-white Africans to live in, restricting their movement and allowing the government to keep surveillance on them. Soweto is famous as the site of some of the largest protests against the Apartheid government, is home of both Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu and, perhaps most importantly, is the last known whereabouts of my Birkenstocks. There is a short story behind my most recent loss that I would like to share: The hostel we were staying at is in a neighborhood called Orlando West, a reasonably safe, more middleclassish area of Soweto and there was a reasonably large park across the street that was frequented by a ton of young children from around the area. We had an hour to kill after getting into the hostel so most of us walked across the street and were immediately gang tackled by hordes of small children screaming in what I think was Zulu. Some of the smaller members of our group were quickly overwhelmed by the onslaught and succumbed to the hairbraiding and picture taking demanded of the children. Rather than surrender, I chose to fight and the only appropriate strategy, in my opinion at least, was to pick up as many of the children as possible and spin around a bunch in the hopes that this show of strength and power would intimidate them into running away. Suffice it to say it failed miserably. Instead, this was the worst thing I could have done in the situation and I quickly had a group of 5 or 6 boys trying to climb up my shoulders. They continued to attack even after it was clear that I had no more arms (I had 2 kids on one side and 1 held on my shoulder) and continued to try jumping onto my back or arms to bring me down. At some point in the middle of this lively chaos, I kicked my shoes off so I wouldn’t trip while spinning. As it started to get dark, I walked back inside the hostel to grab a bottle of water and take a quick breather. When I walked back outside, my Birks were gone. Since I hadn’t thought to bring any other shoes with me (too much of an optimist) this put me in a rough position for the rest of the weekend. Fortunately, dinner that night was done at the hostel so I didn’t need to worry about shoes. The problem was that we were taking a bike tour of Soweto the next morning. Long story short, I didn’t manage to wake up early enough to adventure to find a cheap pair of flip flops in the morning, the tour guides didn’t have a problem with me being barefoot as long as I was okay, and I was enjoying the freedom of not wearing shoes so I decided to go ahead with the tour barefoot. It really does sound a lot worse than it actually was. My feet got used to the pedals pretty quick, we were never actually biking for more than about 10 or 15 minutes at a time and most of the places we stopped were clean and safe to stand at. The only problematic area was stopping near some of the traditional hostels that mine workers would live in. The roads here were a combination of dirt and mud and so when we stopped and walked through a part of this area I was more focused on the ground in front of me and avoiding broken glass or questionable looking areas than actually listening to the guides. I was a bit surprised that I didn’t get more odd looks from people, but it does make sense that there are still many people who simply don’t have shoes in some of the neighborhoods we were biking through and so the only thing that would make it out of place would be that I was white and without shoes. Fortunately, being in a large group of mostly older white people, on bikes, with silly looking helmets drew enough attention that I don’t think anyone else noticed that I wasn’t wearing shoes.

The bike tour was incredible because it allowed us to see a good chunk of the neighborhood we were in without feeling like we were so totally separated from it like what happens on a car or bus tour. We biked by both Nelson Mandela and Archibishop Tutu’s houses along with the Hector Peterson Memorial, a rather intense spot memorializing a student uprising in Soweto in which high school age students attempted to march peacefully to the police station in protest of a new policy requiring all classes to be taught in Afrikaans but were broken up when police opened fire on the march. Hector Peterson was one of the first students shot (he was only 12) and a photo of him being carried away quickly came to represent the uprising. Being at the memorial, listening to people tell that story was crazy. It also proved very relevant when we visited the Apartheid museum the next day and had a bit of a background knowledge, albeit on a very small section of the anti-apartheid movement.

The last day we were there was made up entirely of museums. As I definitely would not have been able to get into a museum without shoes on, I sucked it up and borrowed a pair of lime green shower sandals from a girl on the trip. I think we were both surprised they fit and they certainly looked ridiculous, but it was easier to do that than to walk around until I found a store to buy a pair at. Anyway, the group went first to the Origins center at Vitzsomethingsomething University (everyone just called it Vitz so I have no idea what the longer name is but I saw it on a sign there once) where we took a 3ish hour guided tour around the museum learning about the origins of people, specifically the San who have been living in and around Southern Africa since the dinosaurs cleared out and let people happen. It was quite informative but a bit dry and about halfway through people started feeling pretty sick, which put a bit of a damper on what may have otherwise been fascinating material. By the end of the museum, there were 4 people (myself included) who weren’t 100% but we decided to push on to the Apartheid museum anyway since chances are none of us will have an opportunity to wander through it again anytime soon. Whether because of feeling sick or because I no longer even pretend to have a sense of direction, I managed to get lost several times walking through the museum. It was actually quite nice because it let me see everything the museum had to offer, several times. There is no good way to explain what the museum was like, but coming into it knowing very little about the Apartheid era in South Africa I managed to come out being pretty well informed, at least about the general ideas. Like our experience at the Origins Center, as this museum wore on more and more people began to feel sick. Clearly the injustice of Apartheid was affecting people in a very physical way. Or it was food poisoning from the water. Either way, it was a bit of a rough way to end the trip but everyone managed to survive. Barely. We did stop almost 10 times on the drive home for people to be sick on the side of the road.