Two South Africas

I’ve seen two very different South Africa’s in the past few days. The first one looks like any town on the coast of Florida. My flat is in a touristy area where I am a five minute walk away from a McDonalds. It’s beautiful, but I might as well be in America. Also, part of our orientation yesterday was at the Green Acres Mall. Nobody was too happy to spend four hours in a place that could very well have been the St. Cloud mall. I was not very happy about it.

Today we saw how most of South Africa really is. We took a tour of the Red Location town ship. It was one of the most humbling experiences of my life. I might as well have been on another planet than where I was earlier today. I saw hundreds of people out on the street, kids waving to us, and numerous people trying to sell us everything and anything. It was dusty, dirty, and well, lively. Globalization had reached downtown Port Elizabeth, but it still hadn’t really touched anyone here. The basic living accommodations were a one room tin shack with a roof. The one consolation was that it was a vibrant community, poor, but lively.

We took a tour of the Red Location Museum. The building is a giant concrete structure in the middle of thousands of one room shacks. The museum opened up two years ago for the purpose of educating people of the horrors of Apartheid as well as to provide a gathering space for the community. In the US we like to think of our ugly racial history as thousands of years ago, but it confronts the citizens of SA daily. I didn’t know of the many bloody events of “The Struggle” as it is called here. I am so fortunate to have grown up in a place where I never have known hunger, much less institutionalized racism. As I walked out of the museum I saw those shacks again and I thought about what my duty is now that I have seen these things first hand. Do I forget and go about my business? Or remember how fortunate I am? We had a power outage last night and it didn’t come back until the middle of the day. People were complaining about this, but after seeing the townships I thought, why should I be complaining about the lack of power for less than 24 hours, when these people may never even have electricity? It was a humbling day indeed.

On some lighter notes, I am enjoying my group and the ocean view from my flat. Let me tell you it is a tough life drinking a Black Label Lager with dinner while watching the sunset. Life is Good.

I’ll post pictures soon, but the internet costs R60 (about $6) for 40 minutes and I am trying to conserve the minutes.