Soweto

Today Karen, Kandace and I had volunteer’s day off and took the opportunity to go with Delia and Mr. T to Soweto, which is only around 30 minutes away from us. Delia is one of the local volunteers who comes multiple times a week after work to visit and play with the babies (I blogged a picture of her here). She is hands down one of the sweetest, kindest people I have ever met. Delia drives us around everywhere, picking us up from grocery shopping, taking us to a restaurant, driving us to the mall, the airport, on outings, etc. She’s one of our best friends here. Mr. T, the janitor/maintenance man at the school Delia is a teacher for grew up in Soweto and came with us to act as an informal tour guide. He was extremely informative and was able to talk to people as they passed us and remarked (in Zulu) about our white-ness.

Soweto is rich with history. To give the brief backround, Soweto is an urban area of the city of Johannesburg, standing for South Western Townships. Soweto became a hub of mass protest during Apartheid, (when the Afrikan-er dominated National Party began to implement a system of racial segregation) over the government’s policy to inforce education in Afrikaan’s rather than English. 15,000 students marched through the city and police opened fire. Then Nelson Mandela came in, changing the city forever by helping to end Apartheid.

I really appreciated the opportunity to come here, eat at “Mandela Family Restaurant”, go inside Mandela’s house, and even see some donkeys in traffic.

(Here we are in Maponya Mall, where we drank some Mc Donald's coffee and enjoyed look at the interesting African fashions.)

We walked around Regina Mundi Catholic church, where thousands of people packed themselves in during the uprising, and shot at by police as they exited.


Creeping on the taxi's which are the most ridiculous, dangerous vehicles I've ever seen.

There are 6 (or 7? I forget) “zones”, each representing a different tribe or language like Setswana, Xhosa, or Zulu. Mr. T directed us through the different sections and showed us his old house, then figured we could just stop in to see his granny! She gave us hugs and blessed us when we came in, and we had a lovely talk with Mr. T translating. She lives in a 3 room house, but despite being so small and surrounded by other dirty homes, it was remarkably clean and beautiful.


Outside of Granny's house we met "Billy Bob". I don't know much about him besides the fact his liquor was nearly empty, and it showed.
(Mr. T said it would be safe to take this picture. But when the men started pointing and yelling "camera! camera!" and walking around the cart, we left in a hurry. Still worth it. ;))

A friendly confrontation with a traditional Zulu warrior (but are those really weapons?) who invited us to take a picture.