Johannesburg

After finishing our overland tour and spending a night luxuriating in a real bed and an amazing shower, I had only one full day to spend in Johannesburg (Jo'Burg, Jozi, etc.).  As per my usual MO, I tried to cram in too much stuff, leaving me too little time to do said stuff properly.  Eileen and I took the hop-on, hop-off bus, but only hopped off twice.  The first hop was Constitution Hill, the site of the jail where both Gandhi and Nelson Mandela were imprisoned.  I hadn't realized that Gandhi spent time in Johannesburg, but he did, arriving as a young lawyer in 1903 (he'd lived in other parts of South Africa beginning in 1893).  Experiencing discrimination in South Africa -- for example, he was thrown off a train for refusing to move from his seat in the first class cabin (for which he had paid) when a woman complained about his presence -- apparently made a huge impression on him and prompted his commitment to social activism.  In addition to a museum about the jail, Constitution Hill is now also the site of South Africa's constitutional court (nerd alert).  Our second stop was at the apartheid museum, which is excellent and requires much more time than the couple hours I was able to spend there.

Eileen left from the apartheid museum to the airport, whereas I was picked up to do a two-hour bicycle tour of Soweto, which stands for SOuth-WEst-TOwnships.  We stopped at Nelson Mandela's house and the Hector Peterson memorial.  (Of the estimated 600 children killed during the 1976 Soweto student protests against the Bantu Education Act, Hector Peterson was one of the youngest.)  In cycling around, I was struck by the level of variation within Soweto; some areas were quite nice whereas others were very rundown.  Children often ran alongside the bicycle or came up to ask for a high-five (and occasionally jerk their hand away in a "no-five," proving that some things are universal).  In one instance, I was so busy trying to avoid hitting any of them that I didn't pay attention as I turned over a curb, hit it at a bad angle, and wiped out.  I got a couple small cuts on my hand and a little dirt on my pants, but once again the only real injury was to my pride -- the kids were super impressed.

Afterward, I went for a delightful dinner with Philip (one of Alan's friends from Edinburgh), his girlfriend Tiffany, and her delightful daughter Quorra at Nelson Mandela Square.  Being me, I managed to turn a 5-minute walk into a 30-minute slog, but I got there, eventually.  I also successfully got myself and all my stuff to the guesthouse close to the hotel and met Monju.

It's of course impossible to form any sort of informed opinion on a city after spending so little time in such limited locations.  That being said, my initial impression is that -- while it doesn't have Cape Town's natural beauty -- there's a vibrant energy to the city (second largest in Africa after Lagos) and most everyone I interacted with was very nice and friendly.  Obviously, security and crime is a huge problem -- many residential areas are basically barricaded with walls, gates, and fences of various sorts -- but overall I liked it more than I expected.