Oh The World

Some rough things are going on here too.  Crime is unbelievably rampant-we can't wear 
purses or carry around backpacks in the city we're staying in.  HIV/AIDS testing clinics 
are everywhere, even on the streets around the markets.  And a new thing that I'm really 
upset about actually, is the race issue.  Apartheid ended barely 10 years ago, and race 
is the biggest thing here.  People aren't all that friendly in the city and everyone is 
angry at each other.  It doesn't matter what country you're from, it's all about the 
shade of your skin that often determines how you're treated.  So sad and makes me so 
unhappy.  The midwest is kind of a bubble in that sense.  Race doesn't seem to be as big 
of a deal where we come from.  Unemployment rate is remarkably high, which is what leads 
to much of the crime.  In many other developing countries people starve to death, here in 
South Africa (although South Africa is in many ways developed, it's still extremely poor) 
people take what they need without caring about who they're taking things from.  We have 
to be extremely careful around here.

We saw the Apartheid Museum-just like another Holocaust museum basically.  It's so 
unbelivable that no one knows about Apartheid back in America, and how it destroyed so 
much of this country-people starved, lived in extreme poverty, gangs developed in the 
rural areas, children killed...while in the developed city in Johannesburg, whites lived 
lives of luxury.  We toured Soweto where there was a huge student protest where the South 
Africans protested the Afrikaans language being taught to them by force by the white 
government.  We saw bullet holes in the church in Soweto as well where white police used 
to wait outside We visited the Hector Pieterson Memorial Museum in Soweto, Hector 
Pieterson was a 13 year old boy who didn't even take full part in the protest, and was 
basically just a passerby, who was shot and killed by white police.  There's a pretty 
graphic picture that I took with a man holding Hector's dead body and Hector's sister 
running alongside.

There are SO many parallels between South Africa and the U.S. with what happened in the 
South during the 60s, which is actually becoming something very useful for me to realize 
as it will hopefully help me to figure out ways on how to improve the United States.  I 
didn't think that I would be stretching many boundaries being in South Africa which is 
why I was so upset when the other program filled, but I was wrong.  I'm hoping that this 
program will be even better because we're learning more about peace and conflict which 
wouldn't be the case on the Uganda program.

On the upside however South Africa really is a beautiful country.  And in Soweto people were extremely friendly, and it's the same in the rural areas as far as I can tell.  On our tour through Durban yesterday we came across 2 sand artists on the beach, which is there only source of income.  It was incredible!  So much talent and beauty in what they do.  "Art is our life," he said.  He also mentioned how tourists from Europe and the U.S. are the ones who leave them coins because the South Africans either don't have the money, or else they're just used to unemployment and people doing things like this for money.  We drove through KwaZulu Natal and saw a woman who was weaving baskets; an extremely poor woman whose only source of income was the baskets she sold.  You should have seen the happiness and joy on her face when our group bought a bunch of baskets from her.  She said that was the best day she had ever had.  We even got to watch her weave them.  I'll update more soon.  I miss everyone.