Springbok

Our first full day in South Africa was a nice introduction to the country. We all met in the lobby at 8 AM to head to breakfast. We had breakfast at this great little bakery, not all that different from something you might find in the States. It is located in one of the massive malls in South Africa. The malls here are huge and usually there are two or three right next to each other. They certainly are as big as any mall in a large American city and some are much larger.

We found an ATM and a grocery store and we stocked up on everything from water to SIM cards for cell phones. Then it was off to the Apartheid museum .

The museum is a great place to get a better feel for what apartheid was, how it came about and how it ended. It was great to have the book I mentioned in the earlier post to set the stage for the museum. I have to be honest and say I still can’t get my mind around apartheid. It seems surreal and, while I know it happened, I have trouble believing something so horrible could take place. It is something I have had to read about and go to a museum to even being to imagine what it must have been like. Words really do fail me when I try to describe how I’m ingesting the information about apartheid. I’m sure that baseline will be with me throughout the trip.

Another item I found interesting at the museum was the display on Johannesburg. It grew up as a mining town and I could see some similarities with Butte. They started mining Gold in Johannesburg in 1887 and nine years later the city was responsible for producing 27% of the worlds gold. This brought both black and white mine workers to the city in incredible numbers and the city grew extremely quickly. Mining is still big business in South Africa.

We took off for lunch at another mall in Soweto . Just driving to the mall you got a sense of the townships in and around Johannesburg. This was another one of these massive malls they have here. After lunch we drove around Soweto to have a closer look at the township. You could get an even better sense of the ghetto that existed before and how it is changing. I’ve a couple of people say that can’t believe how much the place has changed in just a few years. There were some very nice homes in Soweto and there were some not so great homes.

They are building a new soccer stadium in Soweto as part of their effort to host the 2010 FIFA World Soccer Championships . There are currently building 9 different stadiums throughout South Africa. A lot of people are worried they won’t be ready in time for the championship and are comparing it to the Athens Olympics. Which means it will be close, but they will pull it off and be ready. South Africa sees the coming World Cup similarly to how the Chinese see the Olympics. It is there chance to show off to the world how well their country is doing.

Dinner was a great restaurant in Mellville. It was on a great street with a number of restaurants and a nice walking district.

I ordered the Springbok. It is a South Africa animal that would be similar to an antelope. The meal was delicious. The springbok was slow roasted and I found it to be a nice cross between antelope and venison. A couple of others in the group ordered ostrich. I tried a bite and it was also very good. I’m looking forward to ordering ostrich at some point in the near future.

Tomorrow we visit a think tank and then on to the Cheetah preserve.