We've got some catching up to do

(Sorry this is so long. I've got a lot to get through, my posts will usually be much shorter and less summary-oriented)

Sawubona! (That's Zulu for "Hello")
Got into Windhoek this afternoon after a whirlwind ten days in South Africa, which I'll try to summarize in a second. The house in Windhoek is quite nice, and I've got a good sized room with two other guys, who are both pretty awesome: Donald, a Poli-Sci and Philosophy major from UNC and Nick, a International Business major from the U of Puget Sound. Everyone here is pretty excellent, and though it doesn't quite feel like home yet, I'm looking forward to an excellent semester! But now let's back up a little bit and talk about how we got to this fine town in the middle of the desert.


Joburg:
The flight over was fine--uneventful, but it seemed shorter than it actually was, and I got to know some people in the group since there were about 12 of us sitting right together on the plane. Did some chatting, some reading, and watched some movies.  It was dark when we got to where we were staying, which was a old convent at a church called St Peter's that is now used for retreats. It was sparse but nice.  I stayed with Donald there as well.


Basically, the focus of our time in Johannesburg was that, even after the fall of Apartheid and the establishment of democracy in 1994, there are still a lot of problems and inequities in the country, and that the government is not necessarily doing a lot to fix it. Basically, asking the question of how to rebuild a nation after something like South Africa went through for most of the 20th century. A man I talked to on my homestay in Soweto summed it up pretty well, by saying that currently South Africa is only a true democracy in name, but on the ground the people still don't have a real voice.
Our first real introduction to this problem (we started off Monday with a few brief history lessons, both at St Peters, and on the road in Soweto) was seeing a part of Soweto known as Kliptown.  We'd just seen a monument to the Freedom Charter which was the guiding document of the ANC (Nelson Mandela's party, and the party that's been in power in SA since '94) that was written in the '50s. It stated things like "everyone has the right to human dignity" and all that good stuff.  We then crossed the train tracks and were in Kliptown. From the bridge over the tracks we could see a sea of tin-roofed shacks, port-o-potties and trash. The first thing that hit me was the smell. Trash, smoke, urine--it was really overwhelming. I kept thinking we wouldn't continue on. First that we'd just look from the bridge and go back, then, as they led us down the other side, that we'd just be there for a second, but we walked through the place for more than an hour.  It was really terrible, visceral, abject poverty. No running water, they had to steal electricity, tiny crumbling shacks. Everything. We had a couple of "tour guides" who were really residents, and part of Kliptown's activist organization, and theytook us around their community, and showed us how things weren't working and how the gov't wasn't doing anything about it. It was very powerful, but really really emotionally overwhelming. There were so many different emotions going on: guilt, wanting to help, thankfulness for my own privilege, wanting to just put it out of mind and move on. It's really hard to reconcile all of that. But definitely, overall, a positive experience. There's a temptation at a time like that to say 'oh man, why didn't i just go to Prague or something' but then you sit back and realize that this is so much more meaningful and useful in life.  I'm still struggling, however, to try to work through all the inequality and contradiction. 
For example, they resent Mandela a bit there, since

 Next day, we learned a lot about the student uprisings in Soweto in '76 (basically, this was the beginning of a mass struggle against apartheid. A bunch of high school students protested use of Afrikaans as the language of instruction in schools, since they thought it was a language of oppression, the police started shooting and things went south from there)  and went to a museum dedicated to one of the students who was killed, where we talked to his sister. Later, we got a talk from a white South African who is trying to de-privatize a lot of the institutions that were privatized under the ANC in the late 90s--he was kicked out of the Communist party for, as he puts it "actually being a communist. " He was an excellent speaker and had a lot of interesting things to say.
Quick highlights of the rest of our time in Joburg before the homestays:

 -We spent a morning at the Apartheid museum. Fascinating, all though not the best-laid out. Very nice space though. Done by the same people as the holocaust museum in DC. Learned a lot, though.
- We spoke with a support group for victims of apartheid (prisoners, poeple who had been shot or t ortured, etc/.) that was also an advocacy group, trying to get reparation money for them, esp. by suing major international companies that gave money and supplies to the Apartheid. Disappointingly, it was not a terribly fascinating experience, but something interesting happened while we were there.  Just before we got there they'd gotten word that they'd recieved a $1.2 million grant from the Gates foundation, and while we were there they got a call from someone else in the org. who'd figured out it was a hoax. So that was pretty terrible, but interesting to see.
  -Went to a play in Joburg, that was pretty cool. It was just two women waiting in line for rice, one a prostitute, and one an old lady, and how they interacted with eachother, and occasionally the audience.
Today, we started off the morning by visiting the office of the biggest opposition party the Democratic Alliance which is, although they denied it, more or less the white party (oddly enough, over time the progressive and far right white parties both consolidated into this big party, although some fringe groups still remain). After that
--we spoke with the VP of Gender Links, a really great advocacy group for women's rights and equality, with a major part of their focus being how women are portrayed in the media across southern Africa. The speaker was quite amazing. Very knowledgeable and engaging. 
--we went to lunch at a big open air market, where I haggled for some world cup jerseys (and probably paid too much in the end anyways.
--we went to the Treatment Action Center which works with HIV/AIDS in a number of differnet capacaties throughout the country. Where we heard from a very funny, dynamic and honest man who has HIV and told us his own story, and about the organization
The last thing we did before heading out to our home stays (besides a sort of decompression chat session in a park) was hearing a dry and too-long talk from an ANC member about their history and hwat they're up to now. It was interesting, however, since a lot of what he said directly contradicted other things that we'd seen and heard.  Most interesting to me is that he said that the ANC had not undergone any major shifts in ideology since 1994. We'd heard differently from both the communist party guy and the man at the DA, and we'd seen differently in places like Kliptown.





Homestay:
Kevin, who came a day late since he was on a different flight, and is a slightly overbearing math major from St Olaf, and I were dropped off friday afternoon at the small, but nice, home of Thandi Dube, a single mother and teacher from a lower middle class neighborhood of Soweto called Pimville. She has two kids. A 22 year old son, Karabo, who's studying logistics and the U of Joburg but living at home, and a very bright and funny 12 year old daughter named Kiyese. There's also some kind of man in her life named Anthony, but it's unclear what their relationship actually is. Anyways, we spent most of the weekend going to various family members' houses around Soweto, which was very interesting. Especially going to her aunt's house (whom the kids refer to as their grandma).  There was some large gathering of neighbors and extended family which was  cool to see. Everyone was very nice, although there was a drunk uncle who kept trying to talk to us...
The next morning we went to church, which was awesome! It was in English, Zulu, and Sutu, but mustly Zulu and Sutu, so Kevin and I didn't understand too much of it. But it was fascinating anyway. It was a Roman Catholic church, but clearly had a lot of African influence. Most of the mass was singing, which was remarkably beautiful.

We watched a lot of sports with our host brother, too. Two South African league soccer games, and a rugby match between the Springboks (the SA nat'l team) and the All Blacks (NZ's team). It was a close game, and South Africa led most of it, but lost it at the end, unfortunately.
We learned a lot about what average South African's think, Our conversation with Thandi's friend David covered most aspects of society, and was one of the most comprehensive views of the current problems in the country that we got. It also seems that racial stereotypes are still very, very present (and mixed-race people are called "coloreds" here, which was disconcerting at first.)  Xenophobia is also a big problem. The people seem to realize this, but are xenophobic themselves nonetheless. Our host mom would say things like "Xenophobia is a big problem" and then later "The reason crime is so high here is that we have so many foreigners coming in. South Africans don't commit much crime, but Nigerians and Zimbabweans are all criminals." So that was interesting. 
We ate very well, both in terms of quality and quantity, and on Monday morning we left full, happy, and having had an amazing experience.

Pretoria:
After a quick lunch and debrief back at St Peters, we set of for Pretoria which is about 45 minutes from Joburg and absolutely beautiful. We got there in the evening and relaxed for a bit, before having a braai (Afrikaans for barbecue) which was delicious. The most interesting thing we did in Pretoria was visiting the Voortrekker Monument. The voortrekkers were basically Afrikaaner pioneers who crossed the country, kinda similar to our Oregon Trail, and killed a lot of natives along the way. This controversial monument commemorates that trek. It was interesting to see the other side of things--to see some white pride in South Africa. It was pretty uncomfortable and disconcerting after all we'd seen so far.  We also visited the US Embassy and hung out in the gardens of the Union Building, which is basically their White House but 100 times more beautiful.

Windhoek so far:
We had to get up at about 5 to get to the airport, which was fun. The flight was short and easy, and the flight attenant randomly greeted me in Hebrew as I got on the plane, I said "hi" to him and he responded with "shalom, todah." So, that was kinda interesting...
As we came in for a landing, all we saw for miles around were desert and bush. It was quite striking. The drive to Windhoek from the airport is about 30 miles through beautiful desert with big rocky red mountains in the distance the whole time.
Really, so far we've just been settling in. We toured the house and learned the rules and all that stuff, and then had some time to ourselves and had a couple of pretty good meals. A few of us, after dinner, went to check out the bar that's just down the street. It's small, but nice, and everything is pretty cheap there. 
And that's about it. The internet is pertty slow here, so communication might be a little interesting at times, but yeah. That's my story.
 More will come as more happens!