It is worth noting that wifi has been very spotty, which is why I am several days behind on updates. Sorta frustrating...

The first full day of our trip contained an important history lesson. Though we had come to South Africa to see animals, we began with a healthy dose of perspective on how the country has changed over the past 25 years. 

We started by taking a trip into Soweto, which stands for South West Township because it was the big township that was located Southwest of Joburg. There is something remarkable about the shanty towns that exist here – some of them were as dilapidated as you can imagine, little more than 4 fragile walls and a tin roof that probably leaks when it rains; while others seemed remarkably well-maintained and perhaps even fancy. None of the huts were very large and they were all crammed on top of each other, but it was clear that some folks had made an effort to turn a horrible situation into something more reasonable. Still, most of what we saw were people who, even decades after apartheid, were still living in horrible conditions.

By the way, the picture next to this text was a power station (not nuclear, though it looks similar to a nuclear plant) that has strung a bridge between the two cooling towers. They do bungee jumping from that bridge – we did not bother to try it out.

In Soweto we visited the Regina Mundi church, which was a central meeting place during the student uprisings against apartheid in the 70s and 80s. It was a beautiful church, despite the bullet holes that still dot the ceiling from the numerous times South African troops fired on the church to ferret out student protesters. The windows include some gorgeous stained glass art work, including this picture of Mandela finally being freed from prison.

Perhaps the most interesting visit on the day was to see the place where the ANC and other leaders came up with the Freedom Charter back in the 1950s. The charter is a remarkable document outlining the rights of the people. Naturally, the White government rejected it but when the two sides got together to create a new national constitution in the early 1990s, many aspects of the Freedom Charter were included. There is a beautiful monument to the Freedom Charter that we all admired. Some of the aspects of the Freedom Charter are quite controversial, including one that calls for all the land and resources of the country to be shared among all the people. 

Just outside the Freedom Charter monument is a small market. Our first experience being tourists! It was amusing to note that one of the women working the market had a baby on her back. Laurie bought some stuff, but most of us just looked around and began to see what kind of stuff we might get on our journey.