Johannesburg day four: Soweto

(I'm back in Cape Town now with my computer and better Internet. I've added photos to all of the Joburg posts if you want to go back and see what I was talking about.)

I always have a knee-jerk reaction to guided tours. It's not that I don't find them informative--it's just the walking slowly in a clump that immediately identifies you to everyone around as a tourist, the lack of chances to get lost, the rehearsed jokes--I just prefer a clumsier, more nonsensical way to see a place. I also cringe at the idea of poverty tourism--something I've heard about in several parts of the world, LA included. While I get that it's important to expose people to the realities of poverty, it's hard to do in a way that doesn't come off as exploitative. On the other hand, what was I to do in Johannesburg, where some of the city's most well known sites also lie within its biggest township?

I had to break my own rules and take a guided tour of Soweto.

Besides the fact that Soweto (South West Township) is legally under the same jurisdiction as Joburg, it could easily be its own city. It's a massive ecosystem 3.5 million people strong--that's bigger than Johannesburg's city center. While parts of the township are as affluent-looking as any American suburb, other parts are made up of rows and rows of corrugated tin shacks with no electricity or running water.

I booked a Soweto tour through my hostel. Besides the driver, it was just me and two young people who are studying the tourism industry, so were only riding along for educational purposes. (A side note--these are the fourth and fifth people I've met in South Africa who are studying hospitality and tourism. That could be a coincidence, or it could be evidence of a new, growing industry.) In three and a half hours I know we barely scratched the surface of Soweto.

At our stops in the township, the driver and the students stayed behind in the car while I got out to look around. At our first stop, that meant I was alone wandering through one of Soweto's most impoverished areas. The driver connected me with a local volunteer guide who walked me back through the shacks and pointed out a daycare.

He told me about using pit toilets and collecting water in a bucket from a community tap and getting used to total darkness at night after the government realized people were stealing electricity from streetlights and shut them all off. "Take pictures!" everyone encouraged as I walked through this community. There were plenty of things to take pictures of, but I didn't take that many in this area, I couldn't help feeling a little disrespectful snapping away at people in their homes.

Two massive towers that used to be part of a power plant are a major Soweto landmark. Once, they served the white people of Johannesburg while polluting the black townships, now they are no longer active, but they have been made into a huge piece of public art which celebrates Soweto life in murals.

Nelson Mandela lived in Soweto once. Before he was imprisoned in Cape Town's Robben Island prison, he had a small brick house there with his second wife, Winnie. The house is now a museum. Mandela's birthday was last week, so the messages of well wishers are still hanging on the walls outside the house.

Just down the road from where Mandela lived, sits another Soweto landmark--perhaps the township's most well recognize. Soweto rose to global infamy in 1976 when black schoolkids who, under a new Apartheid law, were being forced to speak Afrikaans at school, decided to strike. Police opened fire on the crowd of children killing 176. The tragedy was a major turning point in the struggle against Apartheid. Today, the spot is a beautiful memorial and museum.

I left Johannesburg in the afternoon after the tour. I almost didn't go on a Soweto tour, but after visiting I was so glad I did. I think I would have missed out on an important place in South Africa if I hadn't. 

Johannesburg day three: caves and lions

One of the big draws about Joburg for me was a world heritage site about an hour outside town called "The Cradle of Humankind." The name kind of says it all--it's an area where tons of fossils and remnants of our early ancestors have been found.

The drive out of Joburg was an interesting experience itself. The more I see of this city, the more I think it looks like Los Angeles. One similarity is that it takes a loooong time to get past the city part and into the countryside. Driving though the city and into suburbia is a cool way to get a sense of life here though. I don't really mind traveling alone, but I really missed having someone else in the car that I could hand the camera to while I drove so they could take pictures of all the interesting things I was passing--crowds of people walking down the side of the freeway on the way to work, busy marketplaces, a beautiful college campus, and the posters which someone has plastered to every park bench, bus stop and public trash can in the city, which advertise "penis enlargement."

When I did make it out of the city, the countryside was really beautiful. It doesn't look like Cape Town at all. It looks much more like what you probably envision when you think "Africa:" wide, grassy, yellowish plains against a big, impossibly blue sky.

Maropeng was the name of my first stop, it's a museum about some of the history of the area's archeological sites. Of course it's interesting to learn about our very early ancestors, but the presentation of the information at this museum is at times baffling. At one point in the museum you go on a short boat ride underground. It's something akin to "It's a Small World," but with less educational value. Of course, I'm always totally delighted by that kind of nonsense.

I headed from Maropeng to the nearby Sterkfontein Caves. The caves are 20 million years old and 40 meters underground if I remember correctly. Somewhere inside, a very important skeleton of one of man's very ancient ancestors was found. The poor fellow fell down a crevasse many hundreds of thousands of years ago only to be fossilized and dug up by modern archaeologists. It looks like "Goonies" inside the cave, you have to crawl around under a lot of big rocks, and we got to see a bat, so that was all great for me.

 I was tired after the museum and the caves, but I needed to press on! There were more attractions awaiting me. Within the same big park is a place called the Rhino and Lion reserve, which is basically self explanatory. What I didn't know about this place was that you get to drive around in your own car--a do it yourself safari, you might say. So I proceeded down the dirt road to see some animals and dirty my rental car.

When I got to the lion area I was surprised that the lions were napping right next to the dirt road. One of them was even napping IN the road which meant I had to drive my dinky VW over some big rocks to avoid her. Then I wondered if anyone has ever had to change a tire in the park right next to a pride of lions. Luckily, I didn't have to.

The Rhino and Lion park has its own ancient cave and though I had just spent an hour in the impressive Sterkfontein Caves, I was still interested in this one. If nothing else, I wanted to see how it earned the name "The Wonder Cave." The Wonder Cave is not as old as Sterkfontein--10 million years instead of 20 million--and not as deep either, but it is much more adorned with beautiful, white, limestone stalactites and stalagmites. It's like an underground rock cathedral. The tites and mites take about 100 years to gain one centimeter in length, so the massive size of these ones makes the cave's age apparent.

By the time I emerged from the Wonder Cave it was almost 4pm. This worried me because the guard at the entrance to the park had warned me that most attractions would close at 4 and I still had one thing left to do. I wanted to hold a baby lion.

I drove as fast as my little VW could handle on gravel and dirt roads toward the visitor center where the baby lions live. I got there just as they were beginning to close but ran though the gate anyways. I stood near the baby lion enclosure hoping some employee would see me and take pity, scooping a cub into my arms. That didn't happen, so instead I took pictures of their kitten like faces and their oversized paws though the bars until the employees kicked me out. Holding a baby lion will get added to the ever lengthening list of things I want to do someday when I come back to Africa.

Johannesburg day two: brunch, etc.

My second day in Johannesburg began as every Sunday should as far as I'm concerned, that is, with brunch.

 In Cape Town, my comrades and I have been taking a once weekly class about South African media taught by a lovely Capetonian couple named Chantel and Andre. Hearing that I was traveling to Joburg alone, Andre insisted that I get in touch with Anwar, a good friend of his.

 Anwar and his girlfriend Jolene came to get me from my hostel--how lovely it was to be driven around by someone else--and took me to a spot downtown that completely surprised me. We parked in an industrial area under a freeway overpass and approached a graffitied warehouse building but stepped inside and were in a hip, bustling marketplace that makes Seattle's Pike Place look sleepy and lame by comparison.

Jolene and Anwar were kind enough to treat me to a decadent crepe while we perused booths of cool art, vintage clothing, anti-Zuma posters, and hipster cupcakes.

 When they returned me to my hostel I hopped in my rental car again--an act of great bravery--and headed out toward Johannesburg's number one attraction, the Apartheid Museum.

GPS and I had differing opinions as to where one can turn legally, what "keep left means," and how to get onto a freeway, but we made it there. The Apartheid Museum, a memorial to one of the greatest social justice atrocities in recent history, sits on the campus of a huge casino and theme park complex. As you walk in past huge pillars reading "freedom" and "equality," you can hear the shrieks of young children on roller coasters nearby--another form of liberation, I guess?

The museum takes about two full hours to see. It's ends up being a lot of reading, but it's set up effectively. Chillingly, as you enter the museum, one door is marked "whites," the other, "non-whites," and you can only go through one.

I thought I would learn about South African history, and I did, but I was also amazed how much I already knew, that is, how much I've learned in the past two months.

After the museum it was late afternoon which in South Africa I have lovingly come to know as wine time. All the guidebooks say that the neighborhood of Melville is the place to be for trendiness and nightlife, so GPS and I headed that way. As promised, Melville was a bastion of trendy restaurants and bars--though I should note that almost every restaurant and bar that I haven been to in this country has been way cooler than the average LA eatery/drinkery. Sorry LA.

My Joburg native coworker in Cape Town had suggested a spot in the neighborhood, but the "Liberation Cafe" across the street looked more my speed. There, I drank wine, watched people salsa dance, and. Was joined yet again by Anwar and Jolene, who were very kind in their willingness to spend time with me.

Johannesburg day one: driving on th left

Naturally my first stop in Johannesburg was the South African Brewers' "World of Beer" museum. But it wasn't entirely because beer is a high priority for me. A lot of it just had to do with the fact that I was hopelessly lost. When I landed in this city I was exceedingly proud of myself--I got my rental car and made it to my hostel with uncanny ease. It was a more seamless travel experience than I usually have at home in LA.

 My ego inflated, I decided to head out for my first afternoon of sightseeing. I knew vaguely that the downtown part of Johannesburg had some interesting sights, plus I had theater tickets in that area for that night, so I decided to start there. I used the location of the beer museum just to get me started with an address to type into a google search and left with those directions in hand.

 My troubles began when I couldn't figure out how to get out to the hotel's gated driveway. My troubles continued when half the roads I needed to find we're unmarked and the other half had undergone name changes--a noble effort to erase the ghosts of colonialism, but a major impediment to my map reading.

 I managed to get from my hotel to downtown, but then I was faced with crazy pedestrians, buses, one- way streets, and roadside hawkers. You might say I was overwhelmed. When I had reached the point when my google directions became completely meaningless, I found a gas station to pull over in and start toiling with the rental company-provided GPS. (Maybe I should have done that in the first place.) I told GPS the address of the beer museum having nothing else to offer her at this point. In her calming, dulcet tone, she directed me there. As she soothingly said that we had arrived at our destination, a toothless man jumped right in front of my car.

You see, in South Africa, they don't have parking meters, they just have guys who stand around on the sidewalk and watch your car. Apparently, they also aggressively urge you to park with them. Not having driven a car in an urban center very much yet, I did not know this and was completely terrified when the man started yelling something in my window. I don't know how he could tell I was a tourist initially, but when I cowered in fear and started shaking my head, I'm sure it confirmed all of his suspicions about me. He charged me what I am certain is way way too much, but I nearly ran him over getting into the space, so I didn't feel like I was in a position to argue.

 At this point I was right in front for the beer museum and had lost all interest in exploring this neighborhood on foot. What I needed, as indicated by my palpitating heart and crazy eyes, was a drink. So into the beer museum I went.

I've been to the Guinness museum in Dublin and I grew up in microbrewtown, USA, so I feel pretty solid on my understanding of the whole hops plus barley process, but I did learn a thing or two at the "World of Beer." The Disneyesque exhibit walks you through African tribal beer making traditions then the European process as introduced by colonists. I learned that black South Africans weren't allowed to buy any "European" alcohol until 1962, so even beer had a dark history with Apartheid. The end of the tour came with a much needed TWO free drinks, though oddly, they had nothing on tap. I got a free souvenir glass then forgot to take it with me.

After beers and a pretty decent veggie burger I found my way to the theater. The play--a musical about five men in an Apartheid era prion--was fantastic. The parking was free.

Things South Africans say

 

Howzit

This is somewhere between "hello" and "how ya doin?" but it doesn't seem like people really use it as a question. It's just "howzit." When Barack Obama spoke at the University of Cape Town last month he opened with "Howzit!" and got a big laugh.

Lekker
An Afrikaans word. It means "good," "cool," etc. I thought people were talking about "liquor" all the time for the first week I spent here.

Robot
Adorably, a traffic light. My coworker had a fun time explaining this to me when she was driving me around one day.

Shame
I'm still not 100 percent sure what people here mean when they say this, but they say it all the time. It seems to come up in the same places that we would say "that's a shame," or "what a pity," but then they also use it when they see a cute baby or hear a funny joke, so I guess it's a multipurpose expression. When I had a bad cold a few weeks ago, people said "oh, shame!" to me so much I began to wonder if it might also be some sort of religious blessing meant to exercise one's demons.

Is it?
This is another confusing one. We say "is it?" too, but usually only in response to a statement that contains the word "is," as in,
"It's raining outside."
"Oh is it?"
But in South Africa, "is it?" can be used as a response to almost any statement, as in,
"The child is very sick."
"Is it?"
"You owe me 10 rand."
"Is it?"
"I don't understand your weird slang."
"Is it?"

Hectic
When I use the word hectic, I'm usually describing a busy schedule or bad traffic while trying to sound slightly fancy or Britishy. When South Africans use the word hectic they're describing something that I would describe as "crazy," which is confusing, because that can be something good or bad, as in,
"The crime in that neighborhood is really hectic!"
or
"Did you see that amazing cricket game? It was hectic!"

Bakkie 
A pick-up truck, but also sometimes a Tupperware container.

Bru
Like "bro" or "buddy" or "brother."

Braai
A barbecue. 

Now/now now
This is used to mean the opposite of the actual meaning of the word "now." When someone tells you "I'll be ready now," it does not mean they're there and ready to go, it means they're almost ready. When your waiter in a restaurant tells you your food is coming "just now," it means you'll be waiting 10 more minutes. It's not that South Africans are always tardy, it's just that they have completely re-purposed this word.

Pleasure (pronounced pleh-zhuuuuuh)
South Africans use this about the same way we would use it, that is,
"Nice to meet you."
"Pleasure!"
But they use it much more frequently than any American would.

Kind regards
The only way to end an email. 

Sorry
I don't think I've heard any South African use the phrase "excuse me." "Sorry" seems to be the preferred response in situations such as offending someone, asking someone to speak up, apologizing for bumping into someone in a crowded grocery store aisle, or begging for money from a passerby. I was taking a picture the other day and a man standing nearby kept saying "Sorry! Sorry!" I thought he was apologizing for getting in the way of my shot--turns out he just wanted me to give him money and was trying to get my attention.  

Short i=short u
I haven't come close to mastering any part of the South African accent (possibly because there are so many different accents and dialects heard in South Africa), but one common speech pattern I have picked up on is the pronunciation of the short i sound, which comes out sounding more like how I would pronounce a u. For example, you don't watch a film here, you watch a fulm; it's not an elevator or a lift, but a luft; my burthday took place on July fufteenth; and at the end of the meal you have to pay your bull.

Happy Birthday Madiba!

Nelson Mandela is turning 95 in the hospital today.

Here's an African Gray Parrot singing 'Happy Birthday' to him.

Katie and the kudu

 

I am now in possession of a very large wire kudu head. 

I first saw the kudu in a record store early in my trip to South Africa. It was unlike anything I had ever seen. It was made of crazy wire and green bottle caps and its vacant expression bore deep into my soul. It's been on my mind constantly for like two months.

So yesterday was my birthday so I just bought it. It was an unforgettable adrenaline rush.

Of course, when I bought it was telling myself, "this will totally fit in your suitcase."

On closer examination, I don't think it will.

I purchased the kudu at a shop that's about a mile away from where I live--too close to take a taxi, but just far enough away that I had time to get more than a few funny looks from the Cape Town public as I marched home across town with it in my arms on a cloudy Monday afternoon.

So now I have it. And now I'm faced with the task of transporting a huge kudu head across the globe. As far as I can estimate, I think there are about four options:

1. Buy a big suitcase and put the kudu in it

2. Carry the kudu onto the airplane at the risk of having it confiscated at the super-harsh London airport

3. Carry the kudu to the post office here and beg them to help me ship it across the world for possibly a lot of money

4. Come to terms with the fact that this might have been a bad decision and panic before leaving the kudu behind

Does anyone out there know how to get a kudu head from South Africa to the western United States? Any tips welcome.