More days in South Africa!

Whew! I'm going to try to get a few thoughts down before heading to bed, but things have been happening fast around here - it's all been good! This is a very special trip with everything we've been able to do so far, and we still have a week to go! On Wednesday morning we got up before dawn (around 5am) to go to Pilanesburg game reserve. This is a large park north of Rustenberg where the US played their first match versus England. These 'game drives' are like safaris, although the word safari is more associated with hunting here. There are guides that take you in a jeep through these game reserves, and they are more expert at spotting animals, but our host family thought we could and should try a game drive ourselves, in a Toyota Corolla, and boy did things work out just fine for us. Denise was the superwoman of the day. She got everyone out the door early in the morning, and had us at the entrance to the Park by 7:30am, because early mornings and late afternoons are best for viewing animals, and we didn't want to get home too late. Well, the first 30 minutes were kind of dull, but then Denise spotted the first giraffe, and we went deeper into the game reserve and started seeing all kinds of great animals. We saw 10 different kinds of animals in all - elephants, giraffes, waterbucks (a large kind of deer), hippos, wildebeests, zebras, and a kind of antelope that they call something else around here. We looked for lions, cheetahs, leopards and rhinos, but no luck there. But the day was a blast - great scenery, and best of all, we had a giraffe cross the road right in front of us, and an elephant do the same. So we got to see these monsters up close! And it was all the more exciting because we weren't paying a guide, and were not in an area where the animals are kept captive - we really saw them like you would on any safari. Again, I'm not an animal lover per se, but this was a fun day and a great way to learn about Africa. Honestly, when you are driving around, you think there is no way these huge animals could live in this environment, and then when you do see them, it is very surreal, but neat. We got home in time to go pick up a rental car at the airport, since the Andrew's volkswagen was still in the shop. Then, believe it or not, we still found the energy to have Wilson our driver take us somewhere to watch Bafana Bafana (the boys, the boys), South Africa's team, take on Uruguay. Like I said earlier, we arrived last Friday just as South Africa had begun to play Mexico, and we could tell how crazy everything was, so we wanted to go out and experience this game in the streets of JoBurg as a South African would experience it. Well, it turned out to be a great choice. Instead of picking out a wealthier shopping area at which to watch the game, we decided to go straight to downtown JoBurg, to a place called Newtown (even though there is nothing new about it). The only problem is that the cold front was still here, and at gametime 8:30pm local it was about 25 degrees outside. No matter. We were here to party, and probably a thousand fans of South African joined us. There was a warm up street dance party, which we joined a little bit even though we didn't have much of a groove - we did it just to stay warm, then we joined in with the excitement as the locals got worked into a frenzy as the game started to play on three large outdoors screens set up in this official fan park. It was as much fun as you could have for free - the videos that I will post later will show the spirit of the evening. We were alongside just a handful of whites in downtown JoBurg, but everyone was supporting South Africa together, and it was fun despite the disappointing outcome. We got home a little after 11 - a very long but fun day. And we learned a ton! This was a national holiday for South Africa - June 16th - it marked the beginning of the Soweto uprisings against apartheid in 1976.

Thursday we got a later start, leaving the Andrew's home with Wilson at about 10:30am. The plan was to go visit Soweto and Soccer City, the large new arena built for the World Cup, during the same day, since the two are close to each other. Bad idea! Soccer City holds 90K fans - there was traffic everywhere. We didn't have tickets to Argentina/S. Korea, but we did want to see Soccer City during out stay, and Argentina is a great team, so we decided to just walk down to the stadium and see if any tickets were for sale on the street. We were fortunate. We found three singles, so we didn't set together for the game, but Wilson, Fr. Scott and I were able to get into soccer city which was a real treat. I sat in the Argentinian section, and they danced and sang and were obnoxious for two hours straight. They do a funny thing with their arms and hands, throwing them out in front of them, while they are singing and cheering - as much fun as it was, I almost told the guy next to me, after Argentina's third goal - I DO NOT CARE! He was really getting on my nerves. We were happy to be able to find a ticket for Wilson our driver, who really wanted to see Soccer City. We were not disappointed This was also our introduction to the gold and platinum mining around Johannesburg, which is still very active. As we drove to soccer city you could see the golden hills of the mines all around. We didn't get away from the game until 4:30pm, and we decided to save Soweto for another day, since it is a black township that is certainly violent enough that it can be better visited during the day. We went instead to a nice casino/mall/hotel called Montecasino that was very Vegas-esque. It was there that we watched Mexico beat France on a big screen set up for fans. Even though we were under heaters at a restaurant, the 25 degree chill still got to our bones, and we got home praying for the weather to warm up soon!

Friday was as good as any day we have had here! We did make it to Soweto, the oldest and largest black township of Johannesburg, making up almost half of JoBurg's 22 million residents (so Wilson told us). The black townships of South Africa were organized in the 1950s when the Dutch Afrikaners were afraid of the rapidly expanding JoBurg economy and populations. People were coming to the city faster than the city could handle them, and to control the situation, the Afrikan government began the policy of apartheid, moving blacks to settlements farther from the city. Unlike the struggle for equality in the United States, the story here in South Africa is the oppression of the majority, not the oppresssion of minorities.

Soweto eventually became the focal point of the struggle of blacks against Afrikan government. The struggle was begun and accomplished mostly by students. On June 16th, 1976, against the wishes of many teachers and parents, a march was organized by students against the policy that they must go to school in the Afrikan language developed by Dutch settlers, which was spoken nowhere else in the world except in South Africa. As the march proceeded outside of the townships into white-only areas, a peaceful protest was considered a threat by the white police and shots were fired. Hector Pieterson, a 13 year old boy, was an unforunate victim, and his death became a rallying point for a struggle against the Afrikan government that would last until the election of Nelson Mandela in 1994.

to be continued