Jumpy Jo'burg
Trip Start
Mar 30, 2008
1
13
Trip End
May 02, 2008
Johannesburg,
South Africa
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Despite that first impression Melville was a lovely, leafy, hip and happening area. The main street was lined with cool shops, restaurants and bars which would have been right at home on Fitzroy St, Melbourne. And as there wasn't an Indian curry in sight we lapped up the food in waves of greediness - sushi, thai, pasta, sausages, meat pies schnitzel......On our first foray into a supermarket we were like kids in a candy shop - although we didn't buy anything the thrill of being able to have anything we wanted made us happy enough to dance in the aisles.
Everywhere we went we were warned to be careful of random violent crime. At first it seemed to us that it was a case of white paranoia until we read the local newspaper which was full of stories of muggings and murders. After which we were decidedly more jumpy - nervous to even walk past an abandoned post office on a main road in the early evening.
We wanted to visit Soweto so given our nervous state booked a tour guide. Her name was Eunice and she and her daughter lived in a small 3mē tin hut on a small corner of someone's backyard. She had saved for 5 years to buy the land and had built the hut herself.
Inside Eunice's House
She explaned to us that the suburb in which she lived was a middle class area and hence one tap and a toilet was shared between only the main house and 3 other huts.Soweto is huge and as in any city there are the rich, middle class and poor suburbs - the difference being that in the poor suburbs all of the houses are huts - there are 1000's of them piled up one next to the other - and there is often extremely limited electricity, running water and sanitation.
We caught a taxi bus to the area known as KlipTown which is where the Freedom Charter was signed. The contrast was stark - one moment we were in Freedom Square which had cost millions to build and then we crosed the railway track and we were in one of the poorest slums in Soweto. The children wore rags, there were stinking portable toilets and the houses were a ramshackle of every and any type of building material that could be found. We went to visit one of the community projects Soweto Kliptown Youth and where met by some young men trying to start up a new visual arts business called POST77. After shoiwng us through their fledling business they took us on a walk through the township. It was an interesting walk and to be honest by the time we left we felt somewhat confused - all of the people that we had met had been so friendly and inviting and yet in the same breath had also told us that it was not safe for us to be there alone purely because we weren't black.
We only spent a couple of days in Johannesburg before flying down to Cape Town but we would be back to explore more in a few weeks time.
