Hello everyone,
I have made it home safely and I have been lying around the house playing video games and eating chocolate cake for a week. I am finally taking the time to update this blog with some closing thoughts and stories. This will be the first of a three part blog covering my “top ten” experiences in Cape Town, S.A.
These things technically aren’t in an order of importance to me or anything since so many of these things can’t really be rated on a scale!
10. Plane rides and odd traveling experiences
As you may know from a previous post (found here: http://jsheptosouthafrica2010.blogspot.com/2010/05/24-season-finale-not-really-but-this.html) I had some very interesting experiences while traveling to, from, and around the wonderful city of Cape Town. Sitting next to the fat guy throwing back bottles of wine on the plane was certainly an interesting experience but something much weirder happened to me during the trip. One of the “interesting people” I talked to on the flight into Jo-burg, and also wrote about on the blog, I have seen a couple times since our flight.
This girl sat next to me on the flight into Jo-burg. We did talk briefly so there is no doubt we would both recognize each other but we didn’t talk enough where we would want to talk again. Anyways so I had just finished hiking Table Mountain and as I’m standing in line for some food I see her and I’m sure she saw me. I wasn’t sure what to do honestly. Its one of those situations where you half-way know the person but you don’t know them well enough to “want” to talk to them. So I pretended that I did not see her and I’m sure she pretended not to see me. I mean, we aren’t going to see each other again anyway... Right?
Well... That turned out to be wrong. I was watching the terrible movie Clash of the Titans on the flight home from Jo-burg to D.C. And I look up from this terrible excuse for a movie and see this girl standing in line for the bathroom. I started laughing. I’m pretty sure my laughter caused her to look at me but I, very wisely, pretended to be laughing at whatever I was watching on the screen. She and I, once again, both pretended not to notice each other. But I’m sure she saw me and I’m pretty sure that she knew I saw her. We had this unspoken but mutual agreement not to make eye contact or acknowledge the hilarity of seeing each other so many times. But I mean seriously, that is ridiculous! I saw the same girl at three very random times in random places. Anyways I’m sure that is much more interesting to me than to you. Lets move on. In sum traveling has been a very interesting experience for me this summer!
9. Big Ol’ Betty and the Road-trip to Port Elizabeth
Driving a manual, on the left side of the road, at night, in Cape Town, for the first times in my life was a pretty interesting experience! If you didn’t catch that blog entry you can read about my adventure with Justine here: http://jsheptosouthafrica2010.blogspot.com/2010/06/big-ol-betty.html
I will never forget that night...
Speaking of stuff I’ll never forget. Our road trip to P.E. was so incredibly beautiful. Ronny. Justine, and myself drove about 8 hours on the “Garden Route” on the way to my first ever World Cup game. The entire weekend was such a wonderful blessing and I will always treasure it. If you would like to read a little more about that drive and some of the things I saw here is the link for that blog entry: http://jsheptosouthafrica2010.blogspot.com/2010/07/wow-it-is-pretty-hard-to-believe-that.html
8. Touring Robben Island, Visiting the District Six Museum, and reading about S.A.’s unbelievable history
In my blog updates I did not talk much about my experiences with the history of South Africa. I must admit it created an interest in history that had never been there before. The affects of the apartheid and the recent developments in government are still so evident and relevant today. Touring Robben Island I had the chance to explore the famous prison where my new hero, Nelson Mandela, experienced such hardship for 25 years. I mean this island sounds like it comes right out of a fiction horror novel. Oppressive governments have been isolating people there for centuries. Thousands of leapers where isolated to live and die on the island. Prisoners had been mistreated and tortured for decades on the island. All this and much more made the island commonly referred to as “Devil’s Island.”
The view of Table Mountain to your right is the view of Cape Town from Robben Island. Initially many of the prisoners could see this and it would give them some sense of hope for their futures. In order to combat this feeling of hope the government had the prison build walls to block their view of the gorgeous city.
In visiting the “District Six” museum I learned much about how the whites of the apartheid mistreat the colored and blacks in the city. District 6 was at one time a popular place of racial and religious diversity dwelling in the middle of Cape Town. The population was estimated from 60,000 to 70,000. Its economy was thriving and life was pretty good for the residents. Motivated out of fear and possibly jealously the government declared District Six a “Whites Only” area and forced all the residents there to move. The government literally took bulldozers and tore peoples houses down while they watched all simply because of their skin color. This forced removal of non-whites out of the middle of the city to the outskirts caused many to lose not only their homes but their jobs. The distance one would travel for work was greatly increased and a great number of residents could not maintain their jobs in the city. Only recently (about 16 years since ANC took over the government) have people begun to move back into the areas they used to live. As you may know, Nelson Mandela was a huge factor in the reestablishment of democracy and equal treatment for all.
I have had the opportunity to read a couple books about Mandela’s life. I won’t tell you all the details (since if you were interested you could look it up yourself :) but I just want to say that I am utterly impressed with this mans devotion to equality for all. His sacrificed nearly his entire life to this cause. He suffered for decades under the oppression of the whites. And when he finally gained power over the country in 1994 he had all the means in the world to create a civil war and run the whites out of the country. But he didn’t. Instead, somehow this man chose to forgive. And not only did he forgive he convinced countless others to forgive. It was a truly heroic and beautiful thing he did for South Africans not very long ago. We could all learn much about life from this man.
7. Handing out food to the children
When I wrote about my first day at Kid’s Club in Ocean View I told you about how much I loved handing out the oranges to the kids and how disappointed I was when we couldn’t give the kids two oranges because many of them were rotten. I said that many children probably wouldn’t come if we did not give them food. Well I’m sure that is true to some extent I do think they enjoyed coming and worshipping with us. I’m pretty sure they enjoyed coloring. And I am sure they enjoyed watching and laughing as I moved my hips and shook my butt to their songs! Handing the kids their much needed food every afternoon was truly rewarding and I am so thankful to have had the opportunity to be a small part of it!
Well my faithful readers, thanks for taking the time to read a little about the trip. I hope that you can find something here which will encourage you or motivate you! Writing about the trip has given such a great opportunity to reflect on the blessings I have experienced over the summer! I'll update part 2 of this blog on Friday!
God Bless,
Josh Shep
No comments:
Post a Comment