Amandla!

Hey, so after a few days I got back online. Right now Im in Cape Town, pretty hot, the hostal is amazing, but that will be another post. For now, I'll tell you about Johanesburg. Got to my hostel after about 30 hours of travel from Puebla. Plane got delayed in Atlanta and finally made it there. Got to the hostal and sleppt.

in the morning, after waking up at 4 beacuse of jet lag, I went to the Appartheid Museum, a very big museum about the history, reactions and consequences of apartheid, is very interesting if a bit long, but deffinitly worth it. SInce the beggining you can tell how they try to make points out of everything. Your ticket is a card that says either "White" or "Non White" and according to what it says you use a particular entrance. Some exhibitions are quite strong and get to you. Spent a few hours there, and went to a nearby mall so I could get something to eat. Afterwards went back to the hostel and took a nap that turned out to be 8hours long, so i woke up at 4:30 in the morning again.

This time some english guys came into the room around 9 and invited me to tag along with them to a driving tour of Joburg and to eat with a friend of theirs. Now, downtown Joburg is pretty dodgy, youre are not supposed to walk around it since is rather dangerous and you do get that feeling to a certain point. But then we got to the northern suburbs and they turned out to be quite nice, clean and green. City of big contrasts at this point. Not really a lot of stuff to do in here, but I can see where middle class people go and try to keep away from the dark areas.

Then they drove me to Soweto where I would stay a couple of nights. Soweto is short for South West Township, and it istarted as a squatter camp for black workers in Joburg, and then grew up to according to different people, from 2 to 5 million people. Is reputed to be very dangerous and depressing, but this is far from true. People who say that are just afraid of the looks of it and what they see from their big buses windows. Once in there everyone is extremely nice, everyone says hi to you, want to talk to you, is very nice.
The hostel i stayed in is runed by a local sowetan and is very nice and friendly, it has a backyard filled with sand where you can play pool, darts, foosball, drink a beer, relax at a hammock, etc. He makes tours around the township in a bike, which I couldnt do because he had a big group coming to do it, so I walked around to get to Nelson Mandela's House and Hector Pietersen's memorial and museum. Vilukazi Street, in Soweto, is the only street that housed 2 Nobel Peace Prize winners. Pietersons memorial is about the 1976 Soweto uprising where hundreds were killed by the Afrikaner police. Hector Pietersen, a 12 year old was the fisrt one killed. Is a very moving museum, that shows the reality of hardships in the townships and enfizices in International rejection to South Africa during the time.

Back at the hostel a group of kids came to play football for a while (thats soccer for the americans reading this), Lebo, the owner of the place, took a dump, got some people to help him clean it up and made a little park for kids to play and be healthy and keep them away from gangs. Then just played foosball and talked to locals for some hours before going to bed. I have to say that im deeple impressed by Soweto, people make it out to be a lawless place, where being white is a crime and nobody should go there. Granted, there are areas that are worse than others, but in general is a very safe place, very nice, where you can see the conditions in which the majority of south africans live. AN di deeply loved it

Today (Monday 25th) I took a shuttle to the airport, talking to the guy put in place of security in Soweto during the World Cup, since Soccer City stadium is in there. Then fle to Cape Town and got to the hostel, but i'll tell y'all about it later in another post.

Take care

Amandla! Awethu!