It’s hard to believe that I’m already more than halfway done with this program – time has flown by. After our time in Mapungubwe, we drove to Pretoria to experience a few days in the city. It was definitely a change to be back in a place with lots of people, buildings and traffic after being isolated for so long. We stayed in a hostel in Pretoria which was on a really quiet street. Although most people stayed in large rooms, I was lucky enough to stay in a small cottage off the main building with several other people. Although we were never actually at the hostel too often, it was still nice to have such a large space to spread out. It was also really nice that the hostel had internet, so I was able to finally check my e-mail once again.
We were only in Pretoria for two full days, so we were pretty busy. On our first day there we went to the Hector Pieterson Museum which is in a township near Johannesburg called Soweto. Pretoria and Johannesburg are located really near each other, so it didn’t take too long to reach there. This museum was all about black uprising during the Apartheid Era in South Africa. We had learned a little about this topic towards the beginning of the semester, but this museum was very helpful in clearing up a lot of the confusion that I had about the topic. I’ve never officially taken a class on South African history or the Apartheid, so I’ve learned a lot in my time here. That same afternoon we visited the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg. This museum was huge and it took a while to see everything. It basically gave a chronological history of the Apartheid and included a lot of pictures and news clips. There was also a large exhibit on Nelson Mandela’s life, which was really interesting. The subject matter of these two museums definitely wasn’t too uplifting and happy, but they were informational so I’m glad that we got a chance to see them.
After visiting the two museums we went out to dinner at this really great buffet. When I heard that we were going to a buffet, I kind of expected huge amounts of okay-quality food, but the place we went had some of the best food I’ve had all semester. It was a really small place, so our group took up most of the space. The food was international – a mix of traditional African dishes with Indian and Mediterranean plates. There were also a lot of amazing desserts. Once we finished eating we headed next door to a theater where we saw a play. I don’t actually know what the play was called because we were never given a playbill or anything, but it had to do with a young man growing up during the Apartheid. It was a one-man production without any props, effects or lighting but the actor was really good. I feel like I would have enjoyed it more if I actually understood what was going on. Parts of it were in Afrikaans and other South African tribal languages, meaning that I had no idea what the man was saying. I think a lot of it was supposed to be funny, because a lot of people in the audience were laughing, but I had no way of really knowing.
On our second day in Pretoria we visited two more sights – some caves and a museum on the Cradle of Humankind. The area that we were in is thought to be where human originated from. The caves that we visited are archeological sites where some early skeletons of human ancestors have been discovered. Right now they are excavating a skeleton known as “Little Foot” that is a complete skeleton of an ancient human ancestor, but they have been working on this for the past 14 years. We didn’t actually get to see the actual archeological site, but the caves themselves were pretty interesting. In one part of the cave there was a huge underground lake. A university tried to map out how big this lake is, but never reached its far limits because it’s so big.
The museum that we visited was also about the origins of humans. It was definitely geared towards younger kids and there were a lot of school groups there. There were lots of hands-on activities, including this weird boat ride that seemed like it should be in a theme park or something. It was a “journey through the 4 elements of life” which basically consisted of sitting on a boat that went by volcanoes, waterfalls, wind and moving rocks. I honestly don’t know what the point of it was considering it had nothing to do with the rest of the museum, but I’m sure that it is pretty popular with all the kids who visit the museum. There was also a spinning vortex tunnel to walk though, which makes you feel like you are in a spinning tunnel of stars and unable to walk straight. The museum was definitely a change from the kind of depressing museums the day before, but I didn’t really learn much from visiting it.
On our final day in Pretoria we woke up around 4 in the morning to make a 7am flight to Cape Town. It’s definitely a challenge traveling with 25 college students, but we managed to make the flight on time. It takes less than two hours by air from Johannesburg to Cape Town, so we arrived in the city relatively early. On a side note, I was really impressed that we were served a full breakfast on the plane even though it was such a short flight. If it had been an American flight, we probably wouldn’t have even been given drinks. We only spent a day in Cape Town (we’ll be back after our time in De Hoop) but it was long enough to begin exploring the city. Because we’ll be spending more time there for our “midterm break” I’ll save my descriptions of the city until then, because I’ll probably have a lot more exciting things to write about.
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