Cook the books? No lets freeze them!
The following day we started our journey up towards Jo’burg. We had planned to stay in a town called Bloomfontain which was about half way but the crazy old couple who ran the guest house told us we should visit but not stay as they thought it was a dump! They then continued to talk to me for almost an hour about anything they could think of beofre I finally escaped. 
In Bloomfontain we visited the Anglo – Boer war museum and then had a walk into town. To be fair they were right as there wasn’t much to see or do, so we drove on towards Jo’Burg stopping about 90km outside. There was no chance of us driving into Jo’Burg after dark as we value our lives and wouldn’t want to deprive you of our company in the future!
Leaving just a short drive for the next day also meant that we could visit both the apartheid museum and go on a tour around Soweto, both pretty depressing but a must if you’re ever in the area.
The apartheid museum was shocking; as you arrive you get given an identity card which states your race. This then determines which entrance you go through. Ellie and I were given different racial cards (I was a non white and she was a white) and as we went through our seperate doors and began looking at the information in a long corridor I immediately started to wonder what Ellie was doing and what she could see. It was a really effective way to get you in the right frame of mind for the rest of the museum and a shocking insight into the unjust system that was in place. The rest of the museum was equally as shocking and made even harder to comprehend by the fact that it all happened so recently.
That afternoon we visited SOWETO which you can probably remember being the centre of the anti apartheid uprising and a strict no go area for white people. Things have changed a little since then so we were safe! We went to Nelson Mandela’s old house (he lives in a mansion now in the richest part of town) and a church that had been raided several times by the police during the uprisings. It was crazy to see bullet holes in a church!
We also went to the slum area of SOWETO which has no tarmac roads, very few houses with running water and toilets, and people cook on paraffin stoves. It was just like being back in Tanzania and was actually a lot more developed than the area that we used to teach in! We met one young lad who was training to be an accountant (idiot!) and he took great pride in showing me his “library”. Going into his house I was amazed to see he had a huge fridge freezer, until he opened it to reveal all of his books!! The freezer was broken so he decided to use it as a bookcase.
Leaving the slum area and getting back on the bus made us feel really awkward. We have been used to walking around areas like SOWETO and not showing our relative wealth but just talking to the poeople we meet. The rich tourists who were on our trip however thought it would be a great idea to hand out presents in the forms of pens and pencils to the children who were following us about and trying to hold our hands. The chaos that followed was crazy as some children got pens and some didn’t. The ones that didn’t get pens started fighting with the children that had them. It symbolised everything that we had come to hate about tourists visiting developing countries and throwing gifts at people they meet as a way of 'helping' and 'making themselves feel as though they've contributed'. It makes so much more sense to try to make a sustainable contribution by giving the pens to the local school who you have to trust will use them wisely.
In Bloomfontain we visited the Anglo – Boer war museum and then had a walk into town. To be fair they were right as there wasn’t much to see or do, so we drove on towards Jo’Burg stopping about 90km outside. There was no chance of us driving into Jo’Burg after dark as we value our lives and wouldn’t want to deprive you of our company in the future!
Leaving just a short drive for the next day also meant that we could visit both the apartheid museum and go on a tour around Soweto, both pretty depressing but a must if you’re ever in the area.
The apartheid museum was shocking; as you arrive you get given an identity card which states your race. This then determines which entrance you go through. Ellie and I were given different racial cards (I was a non white and she was a white) and as we went through our seperate doors and began looking at the information in a long corridor I immediately started to wonder what Ellie was doing and what she could see. It was a really effective way to get you in the right frame of mind for the rest of the museum and a shocking insight into the unjust system that was in place. The rest of the museum was equally as shocking and made even harder to comprehend by the fact that it all happened so recently.
That afternoon we visited SOWETO which you can probably remember being the centre of the anti apartheid uprising and a strict no go area for white people. Things have changed a little since then so we were safe! We went to Nelson Mandela’s old house (he lives in a mansion now in the richest part of town) and a church that had been raided several times by the police during the uprisings. It was crazy to see bullet holes in a church!
We also went to the slum area of SOWETO which has no tarmac roads, very few houses with running water and toilets, and people cook on paraffin stoves. It was just like being back in Tanzania and was actually a lot more developed than the area that we used to teach in! We met one young lad who was training to be an accountant (idiot!) and he took great pride in showing me his “library”. Going into his house I was amazed to see he had a huge fridge freezer, until he opened it to reveal all of his books!! The freezer was broken so he decided to use it as a bookcase.
Leaving the slum area and getting back on the bus made us feel really awkward. We have been used to walking around areas like SOWETO and not showing our relative wealth but just talking to the poeople we meet. The rich tourists who were on our trip however thought it would be a great idea to hand out presents in the forms of pens and pencils to the children who were following us about and trying to hold our hands. The chaos that followed was crazy as some children got pens and some didn’t. The ones that didn’t get pens started fighting with the children that had them. It symbolised everything that we had come to hate about tourists visiting developing countries and throwing gifts at people they meet as a way of 'helping' and 'making themselves feel as though they've contributed'. It makes so much more sense to try to make a sustainable contribution by giving the pens to the local school who you have to trust will use them wisely.
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