Jo'burg

i must admit, never in my wildest dreams did i think that life was going to be as hectic as it has been for the past month or so. though i am loving everything i'm learning at cornerstone, the schoolwork is intense. we are in our last week and a half of school, meaning that finals week is upon us! In these next few days i have several projects, papers and presentations due... oh yenna (as they would say in afrikaans)! so, instead of being productive and managing my time well, i decided to update my blog instead, lol :) i am going to first bring you back to the first weekend in march when we got the amazing opportunity to go to johannasburg aka jo'burg! Quinton, the guy who has set up a majority of the excursions we went on, had connections in jo'burg and decided that we could not pass up a visit. We flew out saturday morning on our orange 'flymango' plane at around 10am, excited to see another part of south africa. as we were flying over the terrain, the mountains below us were absolutely stunning. i wish i could tell you which mountains they were but all i know is that it was halfway between cape town and jo'burg! We arrived in jo'burg and headed straight for the Voortrekker monument. this is an afrikaans monument dedicated to the afrikaans culture and how they tried to preserve it, especially in the midst of the boer war. unfortunately, i felt this monument to be quite degrading because, knowing the history of the afrikaners, it degraded the zulu culture and glorified their own. The boer war started because the afrikaners were kicked off of their land by the english so, in retaliation, they found new land where the zulus were living (and thus, kicked them out of their land). The zulus fought back, trying to regain their land but to no avail. in this monument, it portrayed the zulus heartlessly killing women and children and looking like savages whereas the afrikaners boldly went into the battle field killing the zulus in order to protect their families. that's a whole lotta crap if you ask me. you could almost feel the hatred penetrating off the walls as we walked around this national monument. it was not exactly the most pleasant experience i have ever had. what also shocks me is that so many of the whites here see it as a great monument dedicated to their heritage and culture... they see it as a good thing! i have a feeling that a lot of this has to do with the brainwashing of apartheid. even though apartheid has been over for 12 years, the thoughts and feelings have still been left behind and engrained into the minds of everyone living here. racism is still prevalent. not only with whites but with every culture. in that sense, it is just like america.
after the voortrekker monument we went to the apartheid museum which was again, a very powerful experience. because i am a visual person, the pictures that they captured drew me in and made me feel as if i had experienced apartheid myself. much of what i saw in the museum was a repeat of what i already knew but it was a good reminder of the past and how we must never forget it. i wonder why we dont have any museums like this dedicated to the civil rights movement in america?!
After finishing up there, we finally got to go to Amakhaya, which is the children's home we stayed at for the weekend. It is more like a campus than a home, with several homes for the younger children and the older youth who stay there. the younger children who live there have either been affected or infected by HIV/AIDS. Affected meaning that their parents, grandparents, etc. who would normally take care of them are either too sick to do so now or have already died because of the disease. most of the children here have been affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic rather than infected but there are a few who also have the disease. There are several homes for the older youth, one for the boys and one for the girls. the youth living in these homes have come here because they are having problems at home and need a safe place to stay. problems meaning alcoholism, abuse, no money for neccessities or just a family feud. whatever the case, they are allowed to stay at Amakhaya for as long as they need, with the director of Amakhaya in constant contact with the parents in hopes that the relationship can be reconciled. last year 11 of the youth went home to their parents which is definitely exciting news!! I wish i would've known more about the older youth as i would've loved to hang out with the girls but most of my time was spent with the children. One girl in particular, Nclacla (i'm not sure if that's the right spelling but that's how it sounds), was my absolute love while i was there. She would jump into my arms, rest her head on my shoulder and both of us would sing together for hours. our favorite song was a xhosa song which goes like this: bayete, bayete n'kosi, bayete, bayete n'kosi, bayete n'kosi oh king, king of kings. on sunday we went to a primarily indian church which was a great experience! though the preaching was a little long and dry, the worship was incredible! Afterwards, we hung out with the kids some more until we had leave on our next excursion, which was soweto, the largest township in SA. It was amazing to me just how different this township was from the townships in cape town. Here, people actually have their own yards, with gardens and clotheslines and such. It is much more of an agricultural city than the cape and the shacks are not piled on top of each other as they are in guguletu or langa (2 of the townships in cape town). Later on, we went to the Hector Pieterson memorial/museum which commemorated all of the youth who had died in the struggle which began in1976. this was known as the soweto uprising as thousands of school children refused to be taught in afrikaans and have it as their medium of instruction. hector pieterson was one of the young boys who fought against this injustice and was killed because of it. how could someone kill a child as if they were worth nothing more than a dog? it still astonishes me everytime i look back and hear or read about these stories because it makes me see the absolute evil and sin that can come about in every one of us. It was a human being that killed another human being. it is something that any one of us is capable of. it is through God's grace that most of us have never had those feelings but it makes me wonder, for all those white afrikaaner men who thought they were doing the service of God by killing off anyone who wasn't white... what must they be thinking now?