Meg's excursion was a emotional roller coaster

It’s finally excursion! I am beyond excited to have been here in Johannesburg the past couple of days, which many had told me is very different from our home base Cape Town, and more like the New York of South Africa. The first few days of excursion were spent in Jo'burg visiting museums, eating delicious dinners, and getting to know the heart of this city. So far it has definitely been an emotionally taxing couple of days with all of the museums focused on apartheid, but I am really glad we got to go through all of them, as they really did provide a good background for a lot of what we face on a day to day basis in Cape Town, and this whole trip really did put many things into perspective. The intensity was also always relived a little at night with our group dinners to a steakhouse, a Mediterranean restaurant, a Thai restaurant and many traditional South African meals. Here are some of the highlights from Jo'burg so far:

Day 1: The flight up was only two hours, but was surprisingly eventful for me. We had an open seat in my row and about half way through the flight a woman came up and asked to sit there, she looked rather flustered. She started ranting to me in Afrikaans until she realized my confused look signaled I was not a ZA native. She explained to me, in English then, that she had to move because she, a white middle aged woman, was surrounded by, “a bunch of black people who were drinking and making her feel uncomfortable”. I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt so I chatted with her to calm her down and then about what had happened. Turns out nothing really happened except a group of young Economic Freedom Fighters were singing freedom songs and having a drink on the plane. She was eager to point out how she was not a racist and that it was not her fault she grew up in apartheid as a white person because she did not choose her fate. The short flight did not enable me to explain to her why many of her arguments were flawed, and frankly I don’t think it was my place. But this definitely set an interesting tone to start off the week full of learning about the terrible atrocities and the level of oppression people did face, and still do, thanks to apartheid.

Day 2: The apartheid museum was extremely hard to get through for me. At one point you stand in a room with around 100 double nooses, symbolically hung for all those who lost their life strictly due to their political beliefs.  The fact that the practice of hanging was only abolished in 1994 shot chills up my spine. You see videos of police brutality like a white man shooting a gun behind him, not even facing the lives he is claiming. Then it hit me that if I were to have been born in ZA, I would have been part of the first generation post-apartheid, and that really puts it into perspective just how recent this was. Off to Constitution Hill, home to ZA’s Constitutional Court and the old grounds of an apartheid prison, the one Gandhi stayed in during his time here. The prison’s conditions for political prisoners were baffling. I will never fully comprehend how one human can strip another of all their rights and dignity everyday and justify that. I will not go into detail, but it makes you wonder how much do we not know about what goes on behind closed doors of our prison systems?

Day 3: Today started out at the Hector Peterson Museum, a boy who was killed by police open firing at a peaceful protest against Afrikaans as the medium of study, he was only 12. This museum especially struck a cord with me due to my interest in education. It is truly inspiring how many young people took the streets and were so passionate from such a young age. There are definitely echoes of that in the culture today, every child knows the freedom songs and for the most part I have noticed they all know quite a bit more about politics than the youngsters back in the states. Following this stop we got to go to the Mandela Family home in Soweto! I have to admit it was semi underwhelming, but SO cool to be on the ground that Mandela and his family spent so much time. Final exciting stop of the day was Freedom Square where a lovely display of the Freedom Charter stands. The Freedom Charter is supposed to be the guiding document of the ANC. Looking through its goals made my heart sink at the realization of how far they still have to go. For example the goals about everyone having access to housing, an equal education, non discriminatory practices, etc. are all such great and necessary goals, but when you look at the millions of people living in informal settlements and kids who go to run down schools, it is obvious that these important issues have been put on the back burner. Yes apartheid ended officially in 1994, but in many ways its repercussions are still very prevalent in today’s society.

Day 4: Today was ZA’s National Human Rights Day which we spent in Sharpeville along with many members of every major political party. Sharpeville was home to the Sharpeville massacre in which a peaceful protest turned violent when police opened fire onto the crowd killing 69 people. At Sharpeville we: walked through the Garden of Remembrance for the 69 killed, I got to talk to an ANC supporter who is the first person I have met here so far who doesn’t hate President Zuma, went to the cemetery where the 69 fallen lay, and ate lunch where a bunch of strangers kept taking pictures of us like we were a tourist attraction. It was an interesting day to say the least, but very cool to see how differently political displays are here (full of song, all in the color of their party, very passionate) vs. in the US. While at the cemetery, our guide opened up to us and showed us just a glimpse of how she was treated during apartheid as a house servant: she told us that when she ate her food outside the dog would always bark at her, she never knew why until years later when the children she raised told her it was because she had always been eating out of the dogs bowl… Hearing stories like that at a graveyard where 69 innocent souls lay makes you question the humanity in this world and really lights the fire in you to make sure times never get that bad for people again.

Day 5: The last day spent in Jo'burg and it was absolutely fantastic! We got to spend the whole day at the first Boys and Girls club to ever be set up in ZA, first helping them out wherever they needed it, but then just playing with the 150+ kids who were there. Playing games like duck duck goose and simon says really brought me back to my childhood. All the kids there were so welcoming to us even though we were strangers, way more so than the kids in the US are towards newcomers. One little 7 year old boy was especially attached to my hip all day and he didn’t even speak a word of English. There is something quite beautiful in communicating without language and just through experience and emotions. I don’t think I will ever forget that little boy's smile, the way he made me feel, the love in that building, or the passion all of those people had towards life and bettering the future generations.

Now after the emotional roller coaster that has been this vacation so far, we are off to Kruger National Park. Leaving Jo'burg I am left with a confused heart. This country has such an intricate past and could have a very hopeful future especially if this next generation grows up with as much love that is in their hearts now. It’s just a very hard reality to wrap my head around that when I leave nothing will really change, yet I get to go back to a simple and easy life comparatively. I am so grateful in one sense, but cannot help but feel a little guilty in another sense.