Right now it’s about 9:30pm and I am in my tent freezing my ass off. Evidently yesterday and today have set consecutive records for low temperatures here in Johannesburg. I thought Africa was supposed to be super hot. I knew it was winter here but figured it’d be more like winters home in San Diego than actually really cold. About a week before I left I checked the average temperatures and decided to bring a few warm layers of clothing just incase it got colder. I’m now very glad that I did that, as I’m using them all.
Anyway, after I finished breakfast this morning with Andy and Katrina we started talking about how we were going to fill the day. Our meeting with our guide wasn’t until 6:00pm at Amadwala so we had basically a full day to kill. We decided to head into town and check out Soweto. For those unfamiliar with Soweto, its like a sub-city inside Johannesburg and is home to a very large population of the areas blacks – many of whom live in slumlike conditions there. Not a place any white devils are overly likely to set up shop. I’ve seen estimations ranging anywhere from 400,000 to just over 2 million in terms of how many people actually live there, so we’ll just settle on “a lot”.
So we told the owner of Amadwala that’s what we wanted to do and she arranged for a driver and guide to come pick us up. The two owners of the lodge, I’m assuming they are a husband and wife, are great and they’ve been nothing but awesome since I met them. As it turns out, another couple had also requested the same activity for the day so we joined up with them. They were an older couple from Sydney – Jim and Elizabeth. I’d say they were probably in their mid 50s and as it turns out they were also booked in as part of the camping trip.
They were also very friendly and fun to talk to and just like with Andy and Katrina I immediately took to them. 4 for 4 so far, hopefully it was a sign of things to come. As we finished introducing ourselves to each other the driver pulled up to the front of the lodge and we all loaded up into her small car to head off into town.
Before going into Soweto we stopped off at a mall so that we could all go to the bank and get some rand if we needed it. I’m not a big fan of going and changing cash at banks, as it tends to be a bit of a pain, so I usually just use the ATMs and withdraw local currency. The exchange/withdraw fee is never really any worse than what the bureaus charge anyway.
Since we were just outside Johannesburg the mall really wasn’t at all different than what you’d expect a mall in the States to look like. The same kinds of stores and restaurants lined the sides, so we didn’t stay much longer than just to get our money. As soon as we had that, it was back in the car to head off to Soweto.
Soweto is broken down into three distinct areas: upper class, middle class and lower class. The upper class area is fairly small but did feature a few nice looking homes – albeit the giant fences lined with barbed wires with another electric fence right behind it did detract quite a bit from the aesthetic qualities of them. Our guide said that those houses would sell for about 1.4 million rand – which comes out to about 200,000 USD. Not too shabby for a giant house, the neighborhood was a little dodgy though.
The upper class area only took a few minutes to drive through and soon we were on to the middle class, which features a lot of somewhat run down looking homes that were bunched up very closely together. I wouldn’t call it a slum by any means, but its not a place I think anyone reading this would probably enjoy living in. The houses here didn’t all have the barbed wire fences and many had no type of barrier or boundary at all.
The lower class area was the last one we visited, and it was about what you’d expect. Slums, giant families living in tiny 1 bedroom concrete homes with no heating or plumbing. It was pretty much all government provided housing and it didn’t look like they’d spent all that much on it. Our guide informed us that the buildings they were living in were called hostels. We stopped our car and got out to walk around next to an area where a group of women were washing laundry around a water pump next to the road. The guide seemed to know one of them and we followed them around one of the buildings and into the woman’s home. Honestly the next part was a little awkward, as the woman gave us a “tour” of her home. It consisted of a main room which served as an all purpose room and a bedroom which houses her and her children. No real bed, just what looked to be a bunch of blankets piled on top of a few pillows scattered across the floor.
It was impossible not to feel a bit of guilt while standing in this woman’s home and I think all five of us felt a bit uneasy about the situation. We gave the woman a little money as a token of thanks and retreated back to the car. I didn’t take any pictures in that area as it just seemed kind of an indecent thing to do, as if paying her what amounted to be a few dollars to walk around her home for a couple minutes wasn’t bad enough.
On the way back to the car Katrina spotted a woman walking away from the water pump with a small child. She reached into her bag and pulled out a bunch of pencils with a rubber band wrapped around them. She gave them to the woman for her child to use at school, she seemed very appreciative. Evidently Katrina and Andy had both brought quite a bit of supplies for children like that to pass out. It wasn’t just a token gesture either; it was easy to see they both really cared. Pencils are small and easy to pack; I’ll have to remember that next time I’m in an area like that.
All in all, the slums in Soweto were bad but to be completely honest, I’ve been in slums that were a lot worse. Just a few minutes outside Bangkok or any number of cities in India and you’ll see people living in much more miserable conditions. That, however, does not diminish the fact that many of the residents in Soweto seem to have been abandoned and forgotten.
Our next stop was a church that had a memorial and exhibit for the Soweto uprising of 1976. I’m not going to turn this entry into a big political post, but suffice it to say that race relations has been a very volatile subject matter for a long time in South Africa and even now, with apartheid long over, there is still a lot of uneasy tension. Even if people don’t openly talk about it, you can tell its still there.
The last stop in Soweto itself was the home where Nelson Mandela lived for many years before going into hiding and then to prison. It wasn’t large but it had been turned into a Mandela museum. I wouldn’t say it was super exciting, but it was interesting to walk through it (all three rooms) and learn more about his life and what he went through. Across the street from house was a small coffee shop/diner that his family still runs. In retrospect, I wish we’d gone inside that too for a little while, as I think talking to the folks there may have been a bit more interesting.
It should also be noted that Mandela tried to go back to that particular home after he was released from prison and became a national hero, but the crowds that gathered around it to see him were always too big and a nuisance on the area, so they had to move him somewhere else.
Finally, the last stop of the day wasn’t so much a stop by a drive through downtown Johannesburg itself. Honestly it wasn’t really what I was expecting. Not in that the buildings were all the different than a midsized US city, because they weren’t. But I was surprised that the city was made up almost entirely of blacks. It wasn’t until we had almost finished before we started seeing some white South Africans (among other races – Asian and Indian were seen too). I’m not sure why that was a surprise to me, I knew going in that the population of South Africa was 80% black, but I guess I just expected the folks walking around on the streets to be a more even mix, but that was hardly the case. When asked, our guide said that whites had almost completely abandoned downtown and now lived and worked off in other areas.
After spending a good deal of time waiting around in the city’s traffic (some things you can’t get away from no matter where you go) we headed back to Amadwala. We still had a few hours until our meeting, so I walked back to my tent to sit down and reorganized some of my stuff, mainly getting the appropriate gear into my daypack for our departure the next morning. Andy and Katrina’s tend was close to mine, so we walked down together. On the way there we ran into a pair of twenty-something girls from England, who they seemed to already know. Their names were Lydia (who was actually a New Zealander also currently living in London) and Tara. They were also part of our group and had arrived the day before and had already met Andy and Katrina. Apparently they’d just slept all day and were only just now crawling out of their tents. If I hadn’t been so cold in the morning when I woke up I probably would have considered doing that myself.
I spent a while in my tent and then walked back up towards the main building of the lodge. Andy and Katrina and Jim and Elizabeth were there and had just ordered dinner. I wasn’t really hungry but I sat with them at a high point on the lodge overlooking the surrounding area while they ate. I got to talk to Jim and Elizabeth a little more, which was cool. Jim was an engineer and he and Elizabeth were in Africa for just over a month and would be continuing on with another camping trip after our concluded in Livingstone late next week.
Before too long, it was about 6:00pm and we all kind of started gathering around a big bonfire near the lodge’s outdoor bar where our meeting was to take place. Once everyone was there our two guides showed up, introduced themselves and gave us a brief rundown of the next week. We were also each given the chance to introduce ourselves to the rest of the group. The full group is as follows:
Gerrie – our main guide and driver. He looks young, I’d guess about my age. Maybe a year or two older.
Jimmy – Gerrie’s right hand man, an older guy. He just started working with Intrepid. Maybe late 40s.
Me – captain awesome
Katrina and Andy – New Zealander teachers living in London
Jim and Elizabeth – older Australian couple
Lydia and Tara – 20-something girls from England
Margaret, Susan, Suzanne, Vivienne and Siobahn – five friends from Ireland. No idea on their ages, they look young (mid 20s) but seem like they could be older by the way they talk. Margaret, Suzanne and Siobahn work in food science, Susan does art for an online gambling company and Vivienne is a police officer.
Michael – British guy working as a QA manager for the iPhone team at Apple. Early 30s I’d guess.
Allison – school teacher from England. Early 30s I’d guess here too.
As you can see, I am the only American. There typically aren’t any on these trips, I was told. It’s unfortunate but not surprising and is something I’ve encountered everywhere I’ve traveled. Americans need to go abroad more; it’d sure be nice to meet some of them out here, but for whatever the reasons we don’t travel more and its sad.
Moving on though before I get off on too big of a tangent, since he was the only other lone male traveler in the group, I talked a bit with Michael. Mainly just about cameras and various iPhone features but it also turns out he’s headed up to Nairobi after this trip and was planning on doing the same route I am taking once there – so maybe I will run into him there. Guess we’ll have to see.
Anyway, we’ve got a really early morning tomorrow if we’re going to make it all the way to Kruger National Park before the gates close AND stop at Blyde River Canyon along the way. Plus, I’m seriously freezing right now and need to go crawl into my sleeping back and pack as many blankets as I can find on top of it.
