Charity: twas a spring break for the record books!

Our weeklong excursion to Johannesburg was event filled. I left not really feeling like I had gotten a good taste of Jozi. However, I did feel like I ended up having all of the pieces of South African history that I have been learning in Vincent’s class, having conversations about with my co-workers and reading about in my non-fiction book (Tutu’s No Future Without Forgiveness) coalesce as we visited the Hector Pietersen museum, Apartheid Museum, Sharpeville Memorial museum and Constitution Hill. I found myself emotionally and physically drained after visiting each of those places and had to do a lot of reflecting and venting. The picture on the left is of me giving the Black Power fist in front of a mural located right outside the Sharpeville Memorial museum. It depicts the Sharpeville 69 running away from the police as they are being shot at from behind. Rest in Amandla (Power). When we went to the gravesite for the Sharpville 69 I noticed how some had matching headstones while others had different ones. When I asked Alice, our tour guide, about it she told me that the different ones were the headstones that some of the victim’s families had placed there and the matching ones were the government issued headstones. I couldn’t help but notice how new these matching headstones looked and when I asked Alice when the government placed them, she said that it was around 2010. Before these government issued headstones the majority of the Sharpeville 69 did not have headstones that designated where there final resting place was. The massacre occurred in 1960. For 50 years they did not have headstones. Let that sink in. 

Another highlight of the week was our last dinner in town at the Orbit Restaurant where we listened to spoken word artists performing their work to a backdrop of jazz accompaniment. There was one poet in particular who performed a poem about the essence of what being a Black woman is that was soul-stirring. I wish I had been able to speak with her after the performance so that I could let her know how much her piece resonated with me and to thank her for her craft. We finished out the week at Kruger National Park doing game drives on the world renowned wildlife reserve. On my first drive, I saw a lion and lioness mating and on my second one (the 4 am early morning drive), we encountered an elephant that tried to intimidate us by shaking its ears at us as it crossed the road in front of us and a lion cub getting separated and then reunited with his brothers, sisters and mama. All in all, twas a spring break for the record books!