Joburg

We gave Saadya the opportunity to take a weekend trip to a place that we could get to from Kigali on a non-stop flight.  He picked Johannesburg (Joburg, Jozi, Egoli), the largest city in South Africa and, he picked our itinerary for the 2 day tour.  First stop...Kigali airport where the national women's handball team from the Congo was also waiting for their flight back home after winning the IHF Africa challenge tournament held at the stadium this past week.  It was great to see them hanging out in the waiting room with their medals.

Congo National Womens' Handball Team captain with trophy

Ready to fly the friendly skies

We arrived late afternoon and were met by our tour guide and host, Janet from Ekala Guest House who drove us directly to our first stop, the Carlton Centre, a 50-story building that may actually be the tallest building in Africa.  From the top we got oriented to our surrounds and started to learn about Johannesburg and its history.  I was surprised to see what appeared to be multiple small hills that looked like landfills as I had not realized just how important gold mining is/was in the city.  The land dumps were dirt extracted during the gold mining process that are only now being cleaned and recycled with yet more gold extracted from the sand.  No surprise, mining is an environmental disaster ruining land and water supplies (they use cyanide in the process).  The Carlton Centre sits in downtown Joburg, an area that has been vacated by many businesses and residents due to high crime rates.  The building itself is now about 40 years old and it is showing signs of aging.  I could imagine it was once a "destination" back when it had an ice rink, movie theater and restaurants.  Instead it now houses some stores and empty office blocks.  After being on top of Africa we drove a bit more around Johannesburg and then returned to Ekala where we had our first of a few wonderful meals complete with fresh fruits from the farm. 

Soccer City!

Joburg Skyline, Carlton Centre is on far right

In the evening, Saadya and I watched "Invictus."  Saadya chose to watch it because his class at ISK was viewing it and he was pretty sure they would finish it while he was away.  Although it was a Hollywood depiction, I enjoyed watching the movie more than I thought I would - possibly the Joburg effect?

Sunday our itinerary included the Cradle of Humankind where we visited the Sterkfontein Caves and Maropeng.  This is the area that has an incredible wealth of paleontological finds and is the center of much archeological work.  It is called the cradle because many people believe it is the site from which humans originated.

In the Sterkfontein Caves we saw where the famous pre-human skull known as “Mrs. Ples”, and an almost complete hominid skeleton called “Little Foot”, dated 2.3 and 4.17 million years old respectively were found. 

Saadya deep in the earth looking for fossils

Statue of Robert Bloom and Mrs. Ples.  Supposedly, if you rub her head you are bestowed wisdom and if you rub his nose you get wealth.  Any guesses about what Saadya rubbed?  I of course went straight for the head.

Area of archeologic work at the caves

The Maropeng museum was a nice touch and we dined there at the massive Sunday buffet (yes, this was an eating tour) with views over the hills outside of Johannesburg.  Somewhat shocking to our eyes were the sight of fire (even right in the city) on the land.  It is winter in South Africa and the dry season so there are often fires burning.  At one point, we drove by a gas station with fire burning all around it and to our surprise, nobody was doing anything.

In the "Cradle"

Fires burning in and around Joburg

In the afternoon we went to the Apartheid Museum where we visited an exhibition about Mandela and were overwhelmed by the history and story of apartheid which, prior to going to the museum Saadya knew very little about.

Tickets to the museum are randomly stamped "white" or "non-white" with seperate entrances and displays

The museum is quite big and in 3 hours of time we barely made a dent but still felt overwhelmed.  The evening saw us sitting down to yet another film, this time "Gorillas in the Mist" which Saadya had never seen and I saw with new eyes.  We were not too surprised to find that our knowledge of the background for this film was much broader than before we lived in Rwanda.

Sunday, our last day on this quick jaunt we started the morning in Soweto not only seeing the township but visiting the sites and memorials that were related to the 1976 uprising.  As we were leaving our parking spot we had a fortuitous celebrity spotting as Hugh Masakela was pulling in to go teach at the studio upstairs.  Saadya, of course, said who?  No, HUGH!

After Soweto we went to the Standard Bank building to visit the old gold mine that was found when they were digging to erect the foundation and to see the exhibit of work by Peter Clarke at the art gallery.

Saadya at the gold mine entrance

Our final stop before the airport was a visit to Constitution Hill which houses the old fort, the constitutional court and the prison known as Number Four that housed Gandhi, Sisulu, Mandela and many others.  I've decided the next film on Saadya's list will be Gandhi and he is planning to read Mandela's autobiography which should keep him busy all summer. 

We returned to Kigali with a few treats for Nava's birthday and ready to prepare for June and the end of our journeys.

THE POSTSCRIPT
Every blog post has a backstory (you may recall I've titled my blog Mbwira ibindi which means 'tell me more') and this one is no exception.  In this case the backstory is twofold and related.  First, there is  the black/white divide that continues to this day, and to my eyes, pervades life in Joburg.  Neighborhoods don't appear to be very integrated and certainly there continue to be disparities in health, education, work and other aspects of life.  Second, there is the high crime rate and fear of crime that determines how many people and certainly how tourists live their lives around the city.  Mbwira ibindi