Trekking, Transporting, and Touring South Africa

I FORGOT WHY I FAILED SO BADLY WITH MY LAST BLOG…

It’s just hard to keep up a blog; I want to share so much with you but so much has happened in the last week that I don’t think I will do a proper job of representing this amazing week.

First off, I am currently on a CGEE program in Southern Africa: Nation Building, Globalization and Decolonizing the Mind. It is actually a program through my school, Augsburg. The first few weeks we will be in South Africa and then we will be moving to Namibia, which is where most of the program is based in. There are 5 students including myself here, which is a pretty small group for this program. From Massachusetts we have Alexis (Clark University, Sociology) and Jimmy (Siena College, Political Science), From New York we have Camryn (Siena College, Political Science and Social Work), and from good old Minnesota we have Hal (Northland College, Religion) and of course myself (Augsburg University, Communications and International Relations). We get along so far.

From the top left: Jamila (RA), Lamont (Religion professor), Alexis, Gail (me), Camryn, and Jimmy   

On our first couple of days in Johannesburg, we spent most of our time in Soweto (South West Township); a township that was developed for black people under the apartheid system and many of the struggles against the apartheid system were fought here. Soweto is said to hold about 40% of Johannesburg’s population with about 1.3 million people living in Soweto. Housing varied from mansions to tin houses and hostels that were made for workers to access the train easily to get into the city for work. These drastic differences in housing are no accident; Soweto is so big because it is built up of many clusters of townships. While here, we went to many museums including the Hector Peterson Museum, June 16th Memorial Acre, Freedom park/ museum, and the Apartheid Museum.

We also had speakers come in like Dale Mckinley and Busisiwe Catherine Seabe. Mckinley spoke to us about the economy of SA and how after Apartheid there was access to politics for black people but no way to access the economy and how that is affecting SA today.  Busisiwe Catherine Seabe spoke to us about the #FeesMustFall movement that is happening in SA demanding for free education. I learned a lot from the two speakers; I recommend you look the two up.  

In Pretoria, we went to the U.S. Embassy and got a good break down of security of what we should and should not do. We have all broken the guidelines the security officer at the embassy gave us. Whoops. We also headed to the Union Building, which is the equivalent to the White House. For lunch, we went to Freedom Park, a park for the South African people to help heal the country after apartheid. After all of that, we headed to one of the poorest townships in South Africa: Alexandria. We did a tour of Alexandria and then headed to the richest square mile in Africa, and no I didn’t forget the South before Africa. Sandton pulls in a lot of money every day. Busisiwe Catherine Seabe blocked the main street to Sandton and the #FeesMustFall movement lost SA 1.2 billion Rand the day just by blocking that road to Sandton.

 N. Mandela in front of  Union Building

Union Building 

This past weekend we had homestays in Soweto! We were separated from the males and females. Jimmy and Hal stayed with an older couple and we had actually met their host mom earlier that week at the Hector Peterson Museum she was telling us the story of what happened to her on June 16th, 1976 at the student protest demanding to get rid of Afrikaans of the required learning curriculum in schools. She told us about how she saw her younger brother at the protest and she believed that he was too young to even know what was going on. She was scared for him because she knew that the police could make a peaceful protest much more dangerous. She heard gunshots when she was separated from her brother and decided to stay in one place in case he tried to find her. Once she found her brother he was injured and tried to find help. She was in a picture that shook the world. Her brother soon died -- her brother was Hector Peterson. She is a sweet lady and very insightful so I was a bit envious the boys got to stay with her at first.

Antoinette (sister)

I stayed with an older couple and their granddaughter, Zama, with Camryn and Alexis. WE HAD AN AMAZING WEEKEND. We met new people around the neighborhood, walked A LOT, and ate amazing food. Our host sister, Zama, was trying to each us some fun SA club dance moves. I personally did not do too hot on the dance floor, but Alexis and Camryn brought out some moves though.

Zama, Faith, and I.

After the weekend we headed straight to Eastern Cape to Port Elizabeth. There we went to the beach and hung around for a while and got a tour. The next day we headed to see the Steve Biko Museum and that was AMAZING. Wow. The museum was so powerful and well put together. I mean yeah there was some patchy areas about his main life and his work as a politician, but it was an amazing museum. Every time I moved to a new poster of information I just couldn’t help but snap my fingers and be like “yes, speak that truth *snap snap.*” When I got to the part of Steve Biko saying that it is important to recognize that you are black and take pride in the skin you’re in. Even though it was clearly a message for black South Africans, it was something that spoke out to me. I know I am Mexican and I am very proud of it, I think it was just overwhelming and I was quite moved to get that reminder to be proud and unapologetic about it. The museum was very inspiring to me and totally worth the 6-hour car ride. I also got a shirt!

Red Location

Mandela Bay

Our final day in Eastern Cape I got sick. So, unfortunately, I cannot go into too much detail about the Ubuntu Center except that they have very nice bathrooms to puke in. We did go to the Addo National Park BUT we missed the appointment for our tour and had to do our own tour. Which was fine because I also ended up puking there too. Ending that day with no food in my system and heading to Cape Town on a 12-hour bus ride.

Striped Pony

FINALLY, I have caught y’all up.

We will be in Cape Town for about a week and heading to Windhoek on the 15th of February.  I’m really loving this program so far and can’t wait to show/ tell y’all about it.

Till next time!

-R. Gail Bartolo

P.S.

I am just now finishing the full blog so I’ll come back and talk about Cape Town soon.

Here’s a sneak peak though.

P.P.S.

I will upload more photos in a few days. These just seemed to be the one that would upload. Bad wifi… We will be in Windhoek soon.