So...I've been in South Africa for just over a week and already so much has happened!
I left Heathrow with four other volunteers on Friday morning and after a very long flight stopping in Abu Dhabi, we arrived in the city of Johannesburg at about 5am on Saturday morning. The first flight was very uncomfortable and cramped but the second was better however I barely slept the whole time so after 3 hours sleep before I left home it took me a couple of days to return to normal.
When we were landing in Joburg the first thing I saw was lots of colourful lights for miles which looked really pretty. We got through customs easily and then looked for the guy from the hostel who was picking us up. The heat hit us even though it was so early and I was in jeans and a hoodie! The journey to the Backpackers Ritz where we were staying was magical because the sun had just come up and the sky looked beautiful. We were surprised to see people already up and on their way to work and also people jogging. I felt like I didn't want to go to sleep because the whole world seemed to be waking up at this time. We got to the Ritz and were shown to our dorms as we wanted to get some sleep before our day started at about 9am. Emily and I, being the only girls at the time went into our dorm but quickly turned around because we scared ourselves as we didnt expect other people to be in the room for some reason and they were all so still...it was really freaky! Where it was so light it was so hard trying to sleep on my top bunk when I could see over the city and hear these really loud birds outside and I was just feeling a little bit over tired to even sleep. It was all a bit surreal! However, I did manage to sleep for a couple of hours.
We stayed in Jo’burg until Tuesday morning. I wont bore everyone with what we did everyday but when we had talks on culture, history and travel and just general meetings with Matt, our country manager, we went to a church hall just down the road from the hostel. In total there was eight of us- seven from England and one guy from New Zealand. My favourite part of the orientation was when we went to Soweto- the famous township which is just outside Jo’burg which I expected to be still full of tin huts and poor conditions. However, I was surprised to see that even outside of the wealthy parts, the majority of the houses have been rebuilt over the years and the conditions are much better for the millions of people who live there. I particularly enjoyed learning about the June 1976 student riots in Soweto where black students protested against the government law that they must speak Afrikaans in their schools which they were not prepared to do because they had their own languages to learn in already and the system started to become too much. In these riots some of the students died as the white police fired at the crowds and the museum was really interesting. It occurred to me how little I know of the history of this country and how I wish they had taught it in England at school because it's such an important piece of history. Going to the apartheid museum afterwards reinforced this as we learnt about the life of Nelson Mandela. It was a huge shock to find out that he survived the prison on Robbin Island for twenty seven years and still came out of it with his original beliefs about the apartheid system. The weather stayed beautiful throughout our time in Jo'burg with short storms in the afternoon which cleared the air and one of my highlights of the orientation was sitting on my top bunk with another volunteer, Sophie, watching an electric storm over the city which we kept trying to capture on camera and failing because it was so quick! There were a couple of people we met in the hostel who were lovely including a South African lady who gave us lots of good advice about the country and a couple of Dutch girls who had been studying here for sixth months and told us that it is not long enough to explore the country! On the last evening we had a braii- the south african barbeque- outside with everyone looking over the city which was really fun and we were all excited to be finally starting the journey to our placements.....
No comments:
Post a Comment