Scatterlings of Africa: 2nd stop on our amazing trip: Johannesburg, South Africa

The Nelson Mandela Bridge in downtown Jo'burg

Bring on the culture shock!

We had a 16-hr bus ride from Harare, Zimbabwe, to Johannesburg, South Africa. It left at 8pm and arrived just after noon the next day. Fortunately, we managed to book a luxury bus this time--Greyhound--which felt more like checking into a flight, and the seats were comfortable and posh! The bus itself was the beginning of culture-shock. We slept pretty well, and the border crossing at 4am went quite smoothly. We didn't have to pay anything to enter South Africa--one quick stamp allows us to stay for 90 days.

When we arrived in Johannesburg (a.k.a. Jo'burg or Jozi) it felt like we had not only arrived in another country, we'd arrived in another world. I could hardly believe we were in Africa anymore--I could hardly believe we'd arrived here by bus. In many ways, Jo'burg felt like it could be any big city in the world. Granted, many big cities feel like that--they have their own distinct culture, yet a lot of similarities, such as busy traffic, tall buildings, a mixture of people.

When we made it to our guest house, the first thing I enjoyed was a nice hot shower--with excellent water pressure. Then we walked a few blocks to a big mall for dinner, a movie, and browsing at a book shop. I was gaping at the mall--it was so shiny and fancy--I had to take pictures! We had delicious sushi for dinner and watched the movie "Crazy, Stupid, Love." The book store added to the culture shock--not only were there lots of books for reasonable prices, but there were books which openly criticized and addressed current political and social issues in the country. Very different from Zambia.

Ryan & Molly on the Greyhound bus from Harare to Jo'burg

the dazling Hyde Park Mall in the Sandton area, a northern suburb and now the business center of Jo'burg

In 2004, Ryan lived and studied for six months at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits--pronounced "Vits"--for short) in downtown Johannesburg, with an NYU study-abroad program. His focus was spoken-word poetry. I'd heard so many stories about this transformational period in his life, and he was very eager to show me all around the city, and visit some places he'd not been to before. In five and a half days, we still felt like we didn't have enough time in this extraordinary city.

Our first full day, we paid a visit to TEE College and had lunch with director, Megan Baxter. We'd met Megan at the AATEEA (All Africa Theological Education by Extension Association) Conference in Ghana last October. Different from TEEZ (Zambia), South Africa's TEE College trains people on 3 levels (Certificate, Diploma, and Degree) and primarily trains clergy according to the requirements of their respective denominations.(TEEZ works at the Certificate level only and trains primarily Lay leaders.)

I was also very impressed with the huge store-room of materials and the color-coded system of organizing them, and also with the fact that they have their materials translated into 5 different languages: Sesotho, isiXhosa, isiZulu, English, & Afrikaans.

Megan Baxter, director of TEE College, shows Molly the materials storeroom--which is twice as big as is visible in this picture

Certificate level materials in 5 languages

Molly with Janet Guyer in the Dunkveld Fruit and Flower market in yet another shopping center near our Guest House (there are three just within walking distance!)

The following day, we met with PC(USA) Mission Co-worker Janet Guyer, who works as an HIV & AIDS consultant. She helps Presbyterian churches in South Africa, Lesotho, Malawi, Zimbabwe & Zambia improve and incorporate HIV & AIDS curriculum into their programing. It was also neat to talk to Janet, because she grew up in Chiang Mai, Thailand, which we will be visiting in a couple weeks. Her parents were Presbyterian missionaries there, and she later served there for several years herself doing similar HIV & AIDS work in churches.

That evening we also saw a play downtown at the Market Theatre called Death of a Colonialist. Though perhaps not well-titled, it was very well written, performed and produced, tackling issues of South African history, family dynamics, and the flight of young professionals from the country.

The Market Theatre

downtown Jo'burg

Our third day, we visited the "Cradle of Humankind," including the Sterkfontein Caves and Maropeng Museum. This area is very important in paleontological research: several early hominids have been discovered here ("Little Foot" in 1994 and Australopithecus sediba in 2010). The museum was AWESOME--one of the best I've ever been to--very interactive, explaining the movement of tectonic plates, species classification system, and extinction, as well as the theory of evolution and how all the early hominids may fit together. If you look at their webpage, you may want to come all the way to South Africa just to go to this museum.

Ry crawls through the Sterkfontein Caves

The theme of the Maropeng museum and also of our blog!

an exhibit at Maropeng museum

Little Foot (Australopithicus)--almost a complete skeleton, with 32 teeth in place and everything. S/he didn't live in the cave, but fell in and died there, thus the excellent preservation.

Day four included a tour around the city, Soweto and the Hector Pieterson Museum (commemorating the Soweto youth uprising), and the Apartheid Museum. It was a long and emotional day. The Apartheid Museum is designed to give you a multi-sensory experience. Your ticket arbitrarily categorizes you, so Ryan was "non-white" and I was "white" and we entered in separate gates. The atmosphere goes from dark lighting and restrictive, caged, confined spaces throughout the exhibits of the 50 years of Apartheid, to emerge finally into areas of light and openness as you reach the new South Africa of the last decade and a half.

The inside of a shop in the Hillbrow neighborhood where Indians now sell herbs, roots, bones and skins and things to Sangomas (indigenous healers)

a baboon hide!
the hunting and selling of all these things is now all regulated by the government

Soweto is much more posh than I expected. It has really improved. Living conditions vary from shanty villages to millionaire homes. Only a very small areas that can be considered "slums" remain.

Many people who don't have a source of income, rent the land around their house to others, who put up small dwellings. The owner may or may not provide electricity to them. So this is a strange mix of development and shanty town all jumbled together.

Cooling towers from an old coal-electric plant which used to spew out pollution on Soweto --now painted with murals and used as a bungee-jump attraction. Symbolic of the changes and development happening in this historic township. These roads are better than most of the roads in Kitwe and Lusaka (especially the compounds!)

New Stadium for the 2010 World Cup--the Stadium's design is themed for Umqombothi--traditional brew in a calabash--the round shape and redish-brown bottom layer represent the calabash/gourd, the light brown represents the color of the traditional beer made by fermenting corn, and the white top represents the foam!

Apartheid museum--the pillars outside state 7 fundamental values of SA's post-apartheid constitution: democracy, equality, reconciliation, diversity, responsibility, respect and freedom... I read the above quote just inside the "white" entrance.

Day five, Sunday, we went for Quaker meeting, which I had long been awaiting. This was a very special place full of very special people in Ryan's journey of faith. It was the first Christian worshipping community he ever became a member of, and their faith and practice formed him greatly. Even though he was only there for 6 months, he became heavily involved in the meeting (~congregation) and even served as the Young Friends Co-Clerk for the Central & Southern Africa Yearly Meeting (like their General Assembly or General Synod) to which he was nominated in 2004 and then flew back to attend in 2005 and 2006!

Quaker meeting House

There weren't many people at the Meeting for worship,
though this is a snap of the Monthly Meeting for business

Sunday afternoon we visited the Wits campus, though unfortunately most everything was closed. During our time in Jo'burg, we also got the chance to meet up with a couple of Ryan's friends from Wits, Nduka and Michael, both of whom are now fathers! We will pass through Jo'burg twice more before we leave South Africa, so we hope to perhaps see these and other friends again. Though we ended up having more days in Jozi than we originally planned, five days was not enough!