Voortrekker Museum and Freedom Park

Now I feel like I have to write a blog every day! We have finally been having some free time in the afternoon, so hopefully I can get to the computer more often.

Today started with a lecture from a professor at the University of Pretoria. She was British and her lecture was about 20th century South Africa. While she was definitely not as biased as the Afrikaaner lecturer, I still felt as though she was making excuses for the way the non-whites have been treated in this country. (In my last post, I failed to mention that the terms for the people here are black, coloured, indian, and white---these terms are all fine to use.) Even our South African driver, Dan Dunn, said that many of the whites here will not admit to supporting Apartheid even though there was a huge support when it was actually occuring. It's a bit disheartening to hear all of this, but is really opening my eyes to what is going on here.

After this lecture, we began our education course with John. I was much more engaged in this as we were comparing the logistics of education in the U.S. to that in South Africa. Unfortunately, there are many similarities between the two systems. I cannot believe how much has not changed in South Africa since Apartheid ended. I'm not sure if I mentioned this before, but an informal Apartheid is still occuring because black children cannot afford to attend the other schools with the better resources. I wish there was something I could do about this NOW. This reality, however, is making me feel the need to come back here and really figure out the system. I think the price of the plane ticket would be worth making a difference here.

After the morning lectures, we went to the Voortreker Museum. To keep it short, this museum is basically celebrating the Dutch colonists (Afrikaaners). It was a bit sickening to see...

Freedom Park was a completely different experience. Although the park is not finished, what will become of it is amazing. It's basically a park that celebrates the liberation of all people in South Africa. We also had an amazing tour guide that I will be keeping in contact with. This man had so much heart. He is the chairman for the African United Youth Organization and he is only 26! He is working to bring unity to this country. Hopefully I will be able to meet up with him again soon and really talk about some of the things he sees going on here.

I don't have much time left on the internet, but hopefully I will be writing again soon. I hope you all are enjoying reading this and please do some research on the xenophobia going on here. I'll be bringing back newspapers, but it's important to know what's happening. It's incredibly tragic and the people here are really unhappy about it. Sorry for all of this depressing news, but I really am having a great time and am learning more than I ever thought I would!

Finally Here!

Hi everyone! I am finally sitting in an internet cafe in Pretoria, South Africa! Sorry for the delay in posting, we have just been incredibly busy! I am certainly learning a lot so far and having a wonderful experience.

I'll start with the incredibly long plane ride...I think I can handle anything after that! We started at 11:50AM in Detroit. That plane left on time and we arrived in Atlanta 2 hours later. The plane from Atlanta, however, left an hour and a half late because the computer system had a message popping up that they "needed to get rid of or else they would have to document the error message." I'm not sure why no one wanted to just write the darn thing down! Anyway, I slept for almost all of the 18 hour flight. I attempted to watch Juno 3 times but I just could not stay awake! We arrived safely in Johannesburg around 5PM.

Beth and I went to sleep pretty soon after dinner. We're staying in this guest house here that is a part of the Tshwane University. It's pretty nice and the beds are very comfortable! It was hard to wake up on Sunday but they only serve breakfast until 9 so I figured I should take advantage of that :-). After breakfast I slept again for about 4 hours! Exciting trip so far, I know... Sunday evening, however, was great. We went out to an Italian restaurant to celebrate a 21st birthday of one of the guys on the trip. We had some excellent South African red wine and a delicious meal.

On Monday, we began school. This was after I went for my first run in the streets of South Africa! It's awesome, but I do get a lot of attention! Probably because there really aren't any whites in the part of Pretoria we are staying...and I have red hair! For these first two days, we have been having lectures at the University of Pretoria---one of the leading white universities during Apartheid. A lot has changed, but I must say, our lecturer that morning had some interesting things to say. Although her lecture was about colonialism in South Africa, she tended to add her own opinion into the topics. She mentioned that if the blacks really wanted to make the whites feel bad, they should stop all of the crime and violence currently happening in South Africa. All of us in the group were shocked that she said such a thing...of course, she did live through Apartheid and is a white Afrikaaner woman. From what I've been told, that's the mentality of most of them. The rest of her lecture reflected a similar opinion towards the black South Africans. Later yesterday night in our debriefing, everyone seemed pretty angry about what she was saying.

Another side thought--I don't know if this is on the news in the States or not, but there is currently a huge xenophobia going on in South Africa. With a 45% documented unemployment rate, there has been a lot of violence here toward immigrants, legal and illegal. In Johannesburg, the native Africans have been killing immigrants and burning their houses. We are safe, but this is such an unfortunate thing to be happening. It's on the news and in the papers every day and the government/authority is doing nothing. Let me know if this is airing in America...I'd be curious to here about it.

Today, we had a much better lecture on education in South Africa by an Indian woman professor from the University of Pretoria. It was sad to hear that many things about the system still haven't changed since Apartheid ended in 1994. The schools are not run by the government, which means the heads of the schools can set any price they want in order for children to attend. The problem then is that the more priveledged students (who are, for the most part, white) are the only ones able to attend the schools with more resources (computers, etc.) The black, coloured, and indian children are then forced to attend schools that are not as good, and do not cost money to attend. More on this later. It's really just a sad reality.

A few other things---they drive and walk on the left side of the road here! I'm going to need to get used to that. I'm sure by the time I actually do, I'll be running into people on the right left side of the Meridian Mall! My time is running out for the internet so I miss you all and hope you are having a great time in Lansing!

-Erin