JoBerg, Soweto and Big Reptiles

K-Staters in South Africa Blog - Sunday, May 23, 2010

We had to get up really early this morning to catch a plane to Joberg. Early, meaning be at the bus by 5am, suitcases in hand, with straightened hair on head. (Whoa, that 4:40am wakeup call reminded me of my youth when we had to get up really early each morning to milk the cows, you know, before their owners would).

Flight to Joberg was good, and we were picked up by our new driver, Gerhart. (Which in Afrikaans is pronounced something like, ‘Gerharchchhhhchht”. Hard to describe the pronunciation exactly, but it’s kind of like the sound you make when you dislodge a major loogie in your throat.

We visited Soweto, a large township within Joberg. It was quite different than what I had imagined. There were huge areas of squatters, poorest of the poor living in tin houses or whatever they can find to put up walls. But there were other parts of Soweto that were much nicer standard of living. Both Nelson Mandela and Desmond TuTu have a house in Soweto must blocks apart. We ate at a restaurant there and the sun was shining and it was a beautiful lunch. Our kids played some soccer in the street with some local boys. I would say Jose of our group was competitive, but otherwise these 5 year olds were dominating Dana and Lesley and Shelby, etc. I tried one reverse direction kick that I learned for Pele’ years ago, but pulled both “hammys”, so I just quit there. Much more for your kids to tell about this, but in brief there are happy people in places that are so much worse off than us. Materially, that is. As the Beatles said, “Money can’t buy you love”.

As our bus pulled away from that neighborhood we waved goodbye to Amy, left behind to live in Soweto. It was her choice; I tried but couldn’t stop her. I felt a bit guilty on the bus as we drove away, thinking, “I wonder if I’m supposed to come back with 100% of the students, or if 94% is good enough?” But luckily I didn’t have to worry about that for long because the students told me apparently Amy won some kind of Hairy Truemann scholarship thingy, and had to go back early to meet this Hairy guy. Whatever. (She did make it back safely, so all is good there). We will miss her, although her roommate, Z, really didn’t seem to be taking it all that hard as she could now decorate each hotel room in her own taste and didn’t have to put up all those McFURson banners.

Lastly this day we went to a crocodile farm. Sheesh, you just gotta wait for the pictures on this, parents. These are massive lazy reptiles that can go fast when they want to. The farm sells the hides, mostly to Korea; but not the meat for human consumption. The harvested croc meat goes back to the live crocs for a feed source. (Nice. Way to eat your cousins, dudes.) It was a very cool place. The lady that hosted us was a former police detective; she had been on the South African force in forensics for 20+ years before the government changed. She was a knowledgeable lady, dressed fashionably, but you could tell if there was trouble she could snap you in two like a twig. I think even the crocs respected her. Shelby wanted to get a picture arm-in-arm, or, um, arm-in-leg, with a croc but we talked her out of that. She woulda been known as Snack Shelby.

OK, gotta go. We’re on the bus again now, and another fire has to be put out: Tawnya has cat crap on her shoe and she has been banned to the very front of the bus because of the odor. Great. Who’s in the front of the bus? Yeah, Ron and I. It’s not even lion or cheetah crap, just domestic cat crap. There are just some things you can’t plan for as a chaperone……

DrG for Ron and the Kids.