Jo-burg part 2

The next morning we got a tour of the Apartheid Museum. We had heard rave reviews and they were justified. From the opening gate where we entered through separate doors according to race (each person’s “race” was randomly assigned and printed on the tickets), to the room where actual nooses hung from the ceiling, the museum gave a moving and detailed account of the apartheid era in South Africa.

They had a temporary special exhibit on Nelson Mandela, and it was riveting. I spent an hour in the room reading, listening, and watching everything I could about the man and I didn’t even get to everything. I won’t go into a history lesson, but there was everything from interviews with him from when he was a young leader of the ANC, to pictures from his trial, and video of his release. There was a lot I didn’t know about Mandela, and I was glad to soak in as much knowledge as I could.

If there was one problem with the museum, it was that it had too much information, which is a good problem for a museum to have. Throughout the tour, we were hit with multimedia recounts from every angle of the events and history of apartheid. From movies and news clips to propaganda artwork and an entire armored truck, the information came in many shapes. Perhaps the deluge was intentional and the barrage of harrowing images and videos are meant to impart on the patrons a sense of the suffering black people endured during the time of oppression and segregation.

After the museum we set a course for Gaborone, and it was a bittersweet goodbye to Johannesburg. The consensus among the group was that Joburg was a great time and the energy and history of the South African metropolis complimented our time spent in Gaborone well. I slept almost the entire way home and the five hours went by in a flash.

We got back at 8pm and hadn’t stopped for dinner, so Derek, Robin and I grabbed a dinner from the caf (misleadingly named the Curry Pot). It was a nice way to wrap up the weekend, as we recounted our favorite parts of the trip and began to think about the week ahead.

Meat balls with macaroni and beef broth with a side of cabbage, washed down with cranberry juice for dinner…