First Impressions of South Africa!

So I made it. I’m here, at last, in the Rainbow Nation! Since my Internet access has been spotty for the last 48 hours or so, here’s a recap of Amsterdam and my first day in Jo’burg.

A hidden garden in Amsterdam

Amsterdam:

My last day in Amsterdam, which was a gorgeous sunny one, was spent on two walking tours, one of the city itself and the other of the Red Light District. Both tours were fantastic, and gave me a greater understanding and appreciation for the city. I learned that due to the rise of the Christian Right in the Netherlands, the unique Red Light District may not exist in its current fashion by 2012, which is quite sad. Amsterdam won’t shake off its seedy reputation anytime soon, and closing the Red Light District will only drive sex workers underground. You just can’t wipe away a 800-year-old institution from society that easily. I did ponder though, what would Amsterdam look like if it were a fashion capital like Paris or Milan? I guess I’ll have to watch Cycle 11 of America’s Next Top Model to find out. 

I also got a chance to see a few museums, notably the Van Gogh Musuem and the Rijksmuseum. Starry Night was being exhibited at the Van Gogh museum, and I loved how the museum set up the paintings chronologically to show how Van Gogh experimented with Pointillism and other art styles. The Rembrandts were interesting, but unfortunately, most of the Rijksmuseum was closed due to renovation, so I didn’t get a chance to really experience the museum to its fullest. I guess it was all good, since I was so tired from walking around the city so much!

Johannesburg:

Jo’burg has been a whirlwind so far. Once most of my classmates landed, we were taken to our hotel in Melville, a pretty safe neighborhood of the city. There was a blackout when we arrived, but it really didn’t matter since it was past midnight and we were extemely exhausted from the flight. 

A boy runs down a side street near the location of the 1976 Soweto student uprisings.

This morning, we were taken on a tour of Johannesburg, the Soweto Township in particular. As Elvis, our guide, told us, Soweto is a city within a city, housing more people than Jo’burg itself. While the former township has quite a bad reputation for being a crime-ridden slum, there seems to have been vast improvements. There are lush green trees lined all around the roads, and people seem to be doing all right, at least in the areas where we were driven. As we walked around the Maponya Mall, the largest mall in Jo’burg and the first to have escalators, I felt as if I was walking around the Garden State Plaza Mall.  Of course, I know there are hundreds of poor people still living in Soweto, but I never felt unsafe walking around, acting all touristy, in Soweto. It was not what I had expected.

We saw the Apartheid Museum today. Unfortunately, we were allotted only a hour to go through the entire complex, which usually takes four hours to do the history justice. Since the tickets were only $3, I will definitely try returning to the museum. We were arbitrarily given race classification pass cards to emulate the conditions of apartheid. On the whole, the museum was very history-driven, with lots of information placards chronicling the events leading up to Apartheid and its subsequent fall. The odd thing about the museum was its location: right next to a casino and a theme park. It was eerie how we could hear screaming people riding on roller-coasters while reading about torture, hangings, shootings and other atrocities committed during apartheid. 

Afterwards, we stopped for lunch at Robby’s Place. Monica Lewinsky apparently visited the place on Nov. 7, 2004, according to the guestbook. I don’t know what she was doing in South Africa, but I thought it was tacky she wrote she was from the “White House, USA.” After filling our stomachs with a delicious South African meal of food I cannot begin to name, we visited two traditional healers, who said they were able to treat HIV/AIDS and other diseases by talking with our ancestors. From that visit, I began to understand the complex nature of medicine in South Africa, how someone who doesn’t know better can get lured into taking herbs instead of antiretrovirals or forgo condoms just because the Pope said that they can increase the problem of AIDS. 

We capped off the day with a short visit to the Nelson Mandela House (closed when we arrived – will have to come back), Winnie Mandela‘s house, Desmond Tutu‘s house, the location of the Soweto student uprising in 1976 and Freedom Plaza, where the ANC charter, written in 1955, is memorialized. Indeed, today was a day full of history. I’m really glad I came.

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A note about photos: Internet access is slow and sometimes intermittent where I will be staying, so please bear with me on the visuals front.

Thanks for reading!